Mele’s Musings

Facebook 2nd Most Popular Site!

Who woulda thunk it?  Facebook has just surpassed Yahoo!  as the 2^nd most visited site on the internet behind Google.  It certainly validates that social media is huge, and that communication and information surely are the killer apps of the internet.

Link to picture

But what are the implications of this information?  As marketers, we have to consider carefully what this information means as many still struggle to figure out what to do on Facebook.  Here are my top 5 take-aways on Facebook becoming #2.

• 1) Facebook is a centerpiece of your social strategy. For whatever reason, it has become very fashionable lately for those “in the know” to say they want to think about social strategy beyond Facebook. Fair enough. There is more to social than Facebook, but acting like it is passé or not the very first thing a brand should get right is just plain wrong. If you want to do social right, you better get Facebook right.
• 2) Facebook is a behavior, not just another place to find an audience. Yes, you can buy ad space on Facebook, but it is still fundamentally different from other types of media. Users come to Facebook to interact, to spy, to laugh, and to communicate. They do not come to consume content per se, or to view ads.
• 3) Facebook is a centerpiece of your mobile strategy. For years, advertisers have been trying to figure out what to do in mobile. Everyone has a phone, but it has been difficult to figure out how to activate it from an advertising standpoint. The issue is that the phone is less a medium than it is a platform. One of the most popular uses of Facebook is on mobile devices. So, let’s put it all together: if you want to be active on in the mobile space as a brand, then get Facebook right.
• 4) Facebook is (potentially) the new search engine. For Facebook’s sake, they better hope so because they are not selling ad space the way Google is. I have posted it before, but the promise for Facebook is that it is a potentially powerful search tool. Smart advertisers can target users according to what they search for or post. But more than that, Facebook is a place that drives search. Good marketing on Facebook will get users more interested in a brand or product. Seeding interest is key.
• 5) Fans are (sort of) a measure of success. It’s true that more fans is generally better. Considering that half of the US population is on Facebook, it should be expected that good brands are able to garner some decent percentage of their customers on Facebook as fans. There is no clear percentage bench mark, but my sense is that you should expect to have at least 5-10% of your customers as fans. But more important than just the pure number of fans, a brand needs to pay attention to the following:
  • Are fans growing or declining? A declining fan base indicates something is wrong, or whatever technique was used to drive fans probably didn’t drive real fans.
  • What are fans talking about? If fans are posting mostly inappropriate, negative, or nonsense material, the number of fans you have is probably unimportant.
  • Are fans active? If fans are not visiting often, are not posting often, or are not passing things along, that’s a good indicator that your program is weak.
  • What are fans doing as a result of fanning your brand? Are you getting more sales, more traffic to your website, or improving brand attributes? If you can’t even measure these things, it’s time to start asking some tough questions of your agency or internal team.

So, I think it’s clear that Facebook is not just a fad.  What is most amazing about Facebook is that it is not just young people using the site.  Its audience is very representative of digital media in general.  Facebook seems to have become as important as email, the telephone, or texting.  It brings people together, it keeps people updated with others, and it is pretty low intensity.  How long it is this popular is anybody’s guess, but it is on a trajectory to be as important and as used over a long period of time as Google/search in general.

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post