• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 14, 2012

Trying to go beyond the limitations of the “Like” as a standard metric for social media, a new Compete study combines a variety of measures to assess the success of online travel brands on Facebook. While the analysis focuses on the travel category, the approaches taken could apply to other industry verticals on Facebook.

Compete argues that the number of Likes a brand collects via Facebook is a common but potentially misleading measure because it’s cumulative rather than current. Using a weather analogy, it compares the obsession with Likes to looking at how much snow has fallen in total over the past 10 years versus how much is falling now or this winter.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a Web measurement firm, it points to unique visitors as a better indicator of current engagement. In that regard, Orbitz in December 2011 led the travel segment with 16,100 visits to its Facebook page. But Expedia led the group of four travel sites Compete studied, also including Priceline and Travelocity, with 1.5 million Likes. Looking at the ratio of Facebook visitors to Likes is one way to show the current “productivity” of all those likes, according to the study.

By that combined measure, Priceline easily had the highest social “productivity” rate, with 98, 631 Likes and 10,334 monthly unique visitors. Orbitz was second, at 5.2%, followed by Travelocity at 3.8% and Expedia at 1.1%. 

Given that most marketing campaigns are designed to drive travel bookings, the study also looked at the overlap between visitors to each brand’s Facebook page and primary site. Priceline again came out on top here, with 77% of its December Facebook visitors also going to Priceline.com. The other three online travel agencies averaged just 30%, suggesting they have room to improve in driving traffic from their Facebook pages. 

The Compete study also recommends other possible ways to gauge the value of Facebook activity. For one, a travel brand might look at whether visitors to its Facebook page are more or less likely to book with that brand. Another option is to quantify the extent to which people visiting the primary site and Facebook pages are more loyal to that brand by learning which are less likely to shop with rivals.

The report noted Expedia, in particular, should do a better job of leveraging its sizeable lead in Likes to boost engagement on Facebook. Maybe it should hire William Shatner, now that he has ended is 14-year run as “The Negotiator” for Priceline.com.