When Facebook launched in 2004 across American college campuses, 757 million people throughout the world were using the internet. Last month, Facebook announced it has surpassed 800 million users, which means the social network now has a greater reach than the web itself did seven years ago – a fact online marketers can’t ignore.
Royal Pingdom, a network monitoring service, recently conducted an interesting study, comparing Facebook to various world populations. Based on its number of accounts and active users, Facebook would be one of the world’s largest countries.
For marketers, Facebook’s consistent rapid growth provides valuable opportunities to reach new prospects. As the website evolves and becomes more intuitive and user-friendly, businesses using Facebook must alter their social media content to be more relevant and valuable to their fans.
Brafton detailed recent adjustments Facebook made to its Insights service, which provides data to companies using the website for social media marketing. Marketers can now see how frequently a page is accessed and by whom. The information will help businesses change the direction of their social media marketing according to which areas of a campaign are receiving the most positive attention and which are generating little conversation.
