“A branded entertainment  series that is valued content for my social media fans/followers and can extend my digital reach to attract more fans? That sounds great, so what’s the ROI of that investment? Here at Big International Company, we have a corporate edict that we receive a return on investment from social media expenditures on an 8 to 1 ratio. For every dollar we spend we need 8 dollars back.”

We actually heard this from a very well educated person at a very large international corporation who was in charge of their social media strategy. Our reaction? Really? How nice for you and your great big company. I wanted to call my stock broker and demand the same ROI from all my investments!

Adweek recently published an article that declared a Facebook fanbase of 1 million is worth about $3.60 million in equivalent media per year. This came from social platform creator Vitrue. They applied this formula to Starbuck’s Facebook presence and determined it was worth $23.4 million per year in earned media.

AgencySpy’s Matt Von Hoven wrote a follow up article where he asked Starbucks for a reaction to this revelation. We find their reaction to be consistent with a big brand that “gets it”. Matt’s article is worth the read and us humans couldn’t agree more with the points he raises.

Now, I’m off to speak to my banker about that savings account where I’m only earning 0.2% on my money.