How much is a Facebook like worth?

Everywhere we go on the web and scattered throughout our Facebook newsfeed are invitations to like products, services, companies and so on. A lot of time and effort can go into getting people to like stuff and then producing endless updates to post on their Facebook news feeds. Is it all worth it though? How much is a Facebook like worth?

There is an interesting infographic here that's worth looking at. It's a bit dull at the top, but gets more interesting as you go down the page. There is another interesting article here and it's brief, but it contains a collection of good links to other articles.

Here are my own thoughts on the matter.

• People that like a brand, product or service are more likely to click the like button than people that don't like it.
• People that like a brand, product or service are more likely to buy stuff than people that don't like it.
• Therefore people that click like buttons are more likely to buy stuff than people that don't.

What does this tell you? Not much. If you really want to know how much a like button is worth you would have to get a large group of people, split them into two, one of which clicks the like button while the other doesn't. Then you can see the difference, if any, between them.

I'm getting a lot of adverts - requests to like stuff - on my Facebook feed, so I'm on a mission to eliminate them. I click the like button and then when the company posts on my feed I click the little arrow at the top and hide it. You then get the option to hide all posts from the company, which I then click. The result is no more ads and no more posts from that company and I have a nice clean Facebook news feed. How much is my like worth?