Alex Hawkinson

Facebook now 1 in 4 Pagesviews in U.S. - What it does and does NOT mean for Businesses

As was reported last week (http://bit.ly/4x9vJh), Facebook now accounts for a whopping 25% of Internet pageviews in the U.S. and is rapidly catching up to Google in terms of total monthly unique visitors.

So what does this mean for businesses?

• Facebook continues to grow in importance as environment where people are interacting and sharing information about what is important to them.

• Businesses cannot afford to ignore this growth and need to deploy Facebook Pages and engagement management tools as part of their strategy.

What it does NOT mean?

• This does NOT mean that Google is shrinking. If you look past the data in the Facebook analysis, you will see that Google is growing amidst all this, and that this is not a "zero sum game". Overall Internet use is continuing to grow and social networking has emerged as a massive incremental time expenditure that augments rather than replaces search as a key way that consumers find information. Businesses need to have a strategy in place that enables them to be discovered in BOTH search engines AS WELL AS social media.

• It does NOT mean that businesses can simply put up a Facebook Page as the center of their social media strategy. Facebook is super important, but it is still just one of the mechanisms that customers will use to find and interact with businesses that they buy from. Businesses must be prepared to be found and engage with their customers wherever they are and across whatever medium those customers prefer. Businesses need to have a "hub" at the center of this that is solely about them (without ads and distractions a click away) and can be the foundation for deep interactions with their most engaged customers.

As I said in my presentation at TWTRCON last week (http://bit.ly/44evxJ), I believe that there are 4 essential things that businesses need to do as they try to "tame the noise" around social media:

1. Get online and keep it simple with a conversational hub that you own so that you're not bouncing around and being inconsistent.
2. Be human and authentically talk about what you are passionate about. That is what will make you remarkable.
3. Connect where your audience is - don't make it hard for them to reach you however they want to. Be where your customers are rather than forcing them to come to you.
4. LISTEN and RESPOND and SERVE consistently using tools that help you to focus on the people and conversations that matter most.

What do you think? How do you see these emerging trends impacting businesses?

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• 2 years ago
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