[source: Mashable.com]

Measuring the ROI on social media investment has just become a small bit easier. A social media company called Syncapse recently published a survey they completed on the empirical value of a Facebook fan. The survey consisted of 4,000 people who have "Liked" a top 20 brand on Facebook and followed their purchasing habits.

The study estimates that someone who has Liked a brand will spend an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand’s products or services than will someone who has not Liked it on Facebook, for a total average annualized value of $136.38.

Product spending was only one of six fan benefits that Syncapse studied. The others were loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity (“perception and recall”), media value (efficiency of Facebook vs. other ways to reach consumers) and acquisition cost.

In most cases, the average fan was more valuable to the brand than the average non-fan, though results varied widely on an individual basis. For example, some fans spent no money at all on a brand and never recommend it to friends.

Note that this was just demonstrated as a correlation, nothing more. Nabbing someone as a Facebook fan hasn’t been proven to increase spending in this study. The study just demonstrates that people who become fans of brands are more likely to spend and evangelize. For example, if someone already liked the brand enough to go and Facebook and officially “Like” it, that person may have been already an above-average spender on that brand.