The Value of a Recommendation: Facebook Share 7x More Than A Tweet?
A new report from the group buying / daily deals platform ChompOn released today reveals some interesting data about the different values of various social media recommendations. Key Stats:
- Facebook 'Share' ($14) is worth the most.
- It is almost twice that of a Facebook 'Like' ($8)
- Tthree times more than a Tweet ($5)
- Seven times that of a Twitter 'Follow' ($2).
All of these were when looking at the use of the social functions built into their own app and only from situations where it resulted in a direct sale from the recommendation. This kind of data is the next in a string of recent announcements from a variety of online business such as EventBrite an GoViral that have begun to try and put actual values to different types of social media recommendations.
Whilst the specific numbers certainly shouldn't be taken to be industry standards I think the general rules that they show are interesting. According to the ChompOn stats you could say that 1 Facebook "Share" was 7 times more valuable than a single tweet recommending the same offer. The EventBrite research from October last year supports that Facebook Shares are more valuable than tweets, generating an average of $2.52 from 11 referrals compared to $0.43 being generated from as many tweets.
Research from the UK's biggest online donation site JustGiving also supports the proposition that Facebook Shares are highly valuable forms of recommendation, in a recent presentation by JustGiving's Jonathan Waddingham, he showed that the average "Like" on Facebook resulted in £3.50 worth of donation (based on 6 Likes for every donation on Facebook with an average value of £21). Jonathan said "Facebook friends are usually closer to you than your Twitter followers. Ergo FB shares often bring more action as the connection is stronger."
So why do we value Facebook recommendations more than those on twitter? I think I agree with Mr Waddingham on this - predominantly are friends with people we have actually met and know on Facebook, where as twitter we have far more casual acquaintances, celebrities of people we find interesting. We value people, relationships and depth. Maybe the effect of a Like or a Share form a friend captures us because their influence over us is based on Robert B. Caildini's rule of "Liking" more than the "Social Proof" that we are often more reliant upon in twitter?