Brian Kim

With Facebook going public last Friday, the social network had its share of negative press around its advertising platform. Some of the big stories these past couple of weeks have been: GM announcing its plan to pull $10 million from its paid Facebook ad campaigns, and Greenlight’s report that 44% of Facebook users “never” click on sponsored ads.

An interesting thing to note, however, is GM’s decision to continue investing $30 million a year on other Facebook marketing initiatives. So where is this money being spent?

A quick look at some of their Facebook pages (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac) shows that GM utilizes several custom Facebook apps in an attempt to integrate into the core Facebook experience.

GM seems to have learned what we have been preaching since the inception of our company – social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, are mediums for sharing and discussion, not for traditional commerce. A successful social marketing campaign, whether it consists of paid advertisements or not, should always foster discussion and participation from the audience. Just focusing on gathering “likes” will only yield marginal results, but once brands begin to truly understand the audience, they will be able to generate both short and long term benefits from their social media followings.

With Splurgy, you will be able to do just that. Our platform provides you with the tools to create offer campaigns that generate buzz and social engagement around your company. More importantly, Splurgy’s business intelligence platform helps you understand your audience’s behavior and accurately measure the efficacy of your social marketing spend.

If you’d like to learn more about how Splurgy can help you, sign-up for a FREE demo session here, and one of our social media experts will be happy to walk you through the product and help you configure the perfect social marketing campaign that is custom tailored for your business.

Social media is all about sharing. Some people prefer to share on Facebook, while others favor using different social channels such as Twitter and Pinterest. There is no denying that sharing something gives a brand that extra exposure, but trying to quantify the monetary value of a like, share or re-tweet is understandably difficult.

While many companies are reluctant to reveal tangible details on their social marketing strategies, Eventbrite has been the opposite. In October of 2010, Eventbrite published a blog post detailing the true worth of a share, like, and a tweet. Their study showed that a Facebook share was the most valuable at $2.52 per engagement, whlie a LinkedIn share and a tweet were worth $0.90 and $0.43 respectively.  While these findings are eye opening, the post is almost 2 years old. So how does it fare now?

Luckily, Eventbrite released some new figures today in their latest report: Social Commerce: A View from our London Office. The report found that in both the US and UK, an engagement via Facebook was the most valuable. Furthermore, the study indicates that the Facebook markets in the US and UK are very similar, with the main differences being in each nation’s taste in brands.

The results also suggest that in both the US and UK, Facebook was the most valuable social network for organizing events. While the study may only apply to ticket sales, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious inherent marketing value of social media.

With the Splurgy universal platform, users can leverage these different social engagements to maximize their brand & product exposure. With companies like Eventbrite continuing to push forward with different social-media-centric growth strategies, perhaps it’s time for you to consider incorporating social marketing methods into your 2012 plans (if you haven’t done so yet).