Brands must look beyond the like icon

Garnering likes on social media does not always impact brand value

Brands spend millions of dollars generating ‘likes’ and creating thousands of followers for their brands online. Two questions marketers are confronted with are: What is the true value of a ‘like’ on, say, a platform like Facebook and how does one measure the value of a ‘like’ in terms two specific metrics, brand affinity/preference and brand purchase intent/loyalty. The answers to these questions are not easy and building attribution for such scores is extremely complex. 

In a recent study by comScore and Facebook, it was found that people who liked the Starbucks Facebook Page or who had a friend who