Facebook: Friend or Foe?

I had an interesting conversation with a web marketing company the other day.  This gentlemen said to me “I am not so sure about Facebook, it seems to be a mess and yet you have to belong to be part of the club.”

That made me stop and think about how some individuals and businesses approach Facebook.  For years companies have built one way conversation mechanisms with their customers.  Personal communication gave way to 800 numbers, and 800 numbers were moved from business headquarters to offshore locations.  The web allowed for email collector accounts with limited feedback options.  Customers began to grumble but still today you can spend 10 minutes on a company phone directory before getting a live body.

Facebook has changed the customers expectation of personal communications.  The real-time activity in Facebook requires someone to monitor and respond to the page.  Someone must initiate conversations, post company news, share links that keep traffic on your page and offer responses to customers.

Take a look at the user statistics provided by Facebook:

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)
• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month
• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
• More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform
• More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month
• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook
• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

This is more than “belonging to a club” this is real use by your customers and potential customers.  You can choose to ignore Facebook and treat it as a fad hoping that your competition is not looking for business where your customers are.  This is equal to a Yellow Page ad in a city where you do not do business.

Or, you can embrace the open communication between customers and companies and participate in actively reaching out to your audience every day.  Seriously – there has to be something to Facebook if 400 million users are there, can you afford to not talk with them?

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