You post on Facebook about the movie you saw that day. You tweet about your favorite restaurant. You blog about a school you like. Now, companies love it when individuals spread the gospel of their brands, and seek to encourage it as much as possible. But, what’s the real value in the social sharing? Well, it depends of course. It depends on the individual’s network. Their friends. Their status. Their authority.
And Eventbrite, a company who specializes in online event ticketing, set about to quantify the value in our social network “sharing”. Their results?
A single “share” on Facebook is worth about $2.52. A share on LinkedIn is worth $0.90. And a share on Twitter is worth $0.43. At least, in terms of sharing about conferences, concerts, fundraisers and more that Eventbrite sold tickets to and was doing the research on.
Let’s think about these findings. Because for one, this is great news for small businesses and online marketers, and should make us all think about how to encourage social sharing in the future. But, what to make about the value discrepancies between social networks? Well, we need to remember that Eventbrite’s study was in regards to event ticketing. So, your Facebook network (friends and family) tends to be a lot more local than your Twitter network (those with similar hobby and professional interests). And this could have a big effect on event ticketing referrals.
In any account, this quantifying should help convince the remaining minority of the value of social sharing.