Facebook has been a phenomenal success, surpassing even Google in traffic each month. Why? Facebook makes it really easy to keep in contact with your friends, family members and coworkers. In fact, Facebook has grown so large, if it were a country it would be the second largest country in the world, behind China, and before the United States.
With all that traffic, and the specific questions Facebook asks its members, it has invaluable information available to advertisers to get an extremely targeted audience. Again, Google once ruled the ad world with Adwords, But Facebook has taken a huge chunk of the ad dollars away from Google.
Who Uses Facebook?
57% of Americans use Facebook, with the largest recent growth in women aged 55+. In fact 57% of all Facebook users are women. 25% of Facebook users, the largest segment, is 45-55 year olds, followed by 35-44 year olds (21%), and 0-17 year olds, (17%).
Will Facebook Help My SEO Efforts?
One thing that people ask me is “Does Facebook marketing for SEO really work?” The answer is Yes! It is very effective. Many people have a hard time believing it is that easy to find hundreds of millions of people in the market.
This is not a case of “too good to be true.” Facebook has hundreds of millions of accounts, and millions of active users per day. The average time people spend on the site is 23 minutes a day...if it were a newspaper, it would be the most popular read newspaper. And if you are a sharp marketer - all that traffic is available for the taking.
Why Is Facebook Marketing So Effective?
Well, the fact that you can reach millions of users for free is the most important thing. Very few sites on the Internet have as much traffic as Facebook are available to internet marketers. Most sites with enough traffic will not allow any marketing, or permit them to have very little traffic.
In addition, Facebook's platform allows you to interact with a very personal basis with your potential customers. This allows you to become very well known and liked, and allows you to grow the level of trust that you will not be able to develop through most of the other marketing techniques.
Of course, it could be a weakness in the eyes of some marketers. If you don’t like talking to your customers and build relationships with them, this is probably not the right way to you. However, if you enjoy the interaction and want to build strong relationships with the market, this offers you a great opportunity for strong SEO results.