I get asked all the time by clients when we are doing an online marketing consultation about why they need to be on Facebook. The typical responses are: “I don’t care about someone going on vacation, or that someone’s dog just gave puppies,” or my personal favorite, “all Facebook is good for is throwing sheep, building farmvilles, and joining mafia wars.” While there are many that get sucked into the giant black hole of Mafia Wars, Farmville and the thousands of other meaningless things to do on 
Facebook, what most people do not realize is the absolute power that lies within the Facebook platform.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we see roughly 1/3 of our revenue right now come from connections on Facebook. This is a strong source of income for our online consulting business. While drinking Google Juice remains king, social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube are gaining traction daily. In case you were wondering if Facebook is something you need to begin integrating into your online marketing plan. Take a look at these stats, it might be time to start mixing in another drink as well.
GENERAL FACEBOOK STATS
- More than 400 million active users
- 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day (200 million people!)
- More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
- More than 3.5 million events created each month (half of those invites come to me!)
FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGES
- More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
- More than 20 million people become fans of Facebook Pages each day
- Facebook Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
USER STATS
- Average user has 130 friends on the Facebook
- Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
- Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
- Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
- Average user is invited to 3 events per month
- Average user is a member of 13 groups
These are some very powerful statistics! While Facebook is an internal network that does not bring you the SEO value that you are used to your website or blog bringing, it is powerful. Think about it like this: In 2009 the population of the United States was just over 307 million according to Google. Facebook ads, show that right now there are 112
, 291,180 people on Facebook that live in the US and are 18 years or older. In other words, about one out of every three Americans have a Facebook account, and that 1 out of every 6 is on it daily!
There are many other ways to use Facebook in your online marketing plan for your business. Hopefully by now you realize this is something you really need to start doing. If you need help getting started, feel free to ask me for assistance, I love helping clients get their Facebook Business Page set up & optimizing their efforts on Facebook.