For an article that lands on the social marketer like a proverbial ton of bricks, check out “What’s the Value of a Like?” in the March-April issue of the Harvard Business Review.
“Social media doesn’t work the way many marketers think it does. The mere act of endorsing a brand does not affect a customer’s behavior or lead to increased purchasing, nor does it spur purchasing by friends,” concluded authors Leslie K. John, Daniel Mochon, Oliver Emrich, and Janet Schwartz in their report on four years of experiments, 23 in all, that engaged 18,000 people.
