The Face of Facebook in 2012
Today and Tomorrow I have a pair of infographs I found recently. This one is specifically about Facebook, tomorrow we look at all the big social networks.
All I Need is a Facebook Page and other Social Media Fallicies
Predictions are that Facebook will hit 100 pretty soon.
That’s 100 Billion.
100,000,000,000 Facebook users on this planet.
Oops, better revise that number to 1 Billion. Thanks to my friend Ricky Potts for noting my mathematical error. We are currently somewhere between 800 and 900 Million.
Anyway:
There are some internet marketing guru’s that will tell you Facebook is the answer to your online image problems, and that setting up a Facebook page for your business is all you need, not a website.
They are wrong.
With the exception of those who simply don’t have the funds to have their own website, no scratch that. That’s not an excuse either.
I know someone who created a blog website that was generating nearly 20,000 visitors per week without spending a dime. His only investment was time.
But back to Facebook.
Why is it so popular?
Because of the connections and relationships.
Not because of the advertising or businesses pushing their goods on folks who “Like” them.
I’ve discovered that one of the most effective uses of Facebook for business is to use it as a conversation starter and point people to the answer they are looking for on your website.
That way you can continue to use Facebook as a customer service and relationship building tool and draw traffic to your website where you can invite them to actually do business with them.
Similar principles apply to the other social media channels. Use them to enhance but not replace your online presence which should be your website on a domain that you own and can control.
Which points me back to your website. Instead of dumping it, fix it. Need help? Call a pro. Contact me and we’ll set you straight.
You’ve Been Hacked ?
Monday morning as I was checking my email via my phone I noticed an alert from Facebook.
The email said, “Hi Scott Howard,
It looks like someone used your Facebook account to log into Facebook for Android (Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 9:07pm).
Was this you? If so, you can disregard the rest of this email.”
No, it wasn’t me. 9:07pm was California Time. Translate it to Indiana time and that’s 7 minutes past midnight. I was fast asleep.
But due to the busyness of my morning at the moment I saw the email, i did nothing about it.
A couple hours later, I get a couple messages from friends and family alerting me to out of the ordinary postings on my Facebook page.
A light goes off in my Monday morning brain and I go to work at taking care of the problem.
So I went to my Facebook page and reset the password.
I went to my other social media accounts and reset those passwords
I went to every single account I access online and reset those passwords.
It was a pain.
But it would be more of a pain if I continued to ignore the warning.
Over the weekend I was listening to a radio show in Detroit about web and computer stuff and there was a guest on the program that was conned by someone via an online dating sight. The website was legit, but the scammers were not.
What caught my attention while listening to this story was the patience that the scammer had. Two months of daily online contact with the victim to build trust. Then he asked her for a “small loan of a couple thousand dollars.”
Relate this back to my Facebook account being hacked, and if I had continued to ignore the warning from Facebook, the hacker could have waited too.
While they didn’t wait 2 months, they waited a good 8 hours before posting a spammy message.
Internet security is only as good as the person behind the keyboard.
Change your passwords regularly.
Create a system to remember your passwords because they should be different for every account.
I could go on and on about this but instead, I’ll let you chime in.
Any other suggestions?
Is Gen Y Gen Facebook?
MarketingProfs.com shared this this week:
Social networking is blurring the lines between people’s personal and professional lives, particularly among younger generations, according to a new study by Millennial Branding.
Gen-Y Facebook users (those now roughly age 18-29) often use their Facebook profiles as an extension of their professional personalities, even as they socialize with family and friends, the study finds.
On average, Gen-Y Facebook users are connected to 16 co-workers via Facebook, although that number is a relatively small percentage (2.3%) of their total average friend count (696):
Below, additional findings from Millennial Branding’s study of 4 million Gen-Y Facebook profiles, gathered via Identified.com’s database on Facebook.
Gen-Y Facebook Users Define Themselves by Colleges, Not Workplaces
Only 36% of Gen-Y Facebook users list an employer on their Facebook profile, whereas 80% list at least one school.
Short work stints are common: Gen-Y Facebook users spend an average of just over 2 years at their first job—and, interestingly, “owner” is the fifth-most popular title among this entrepreneurial generation.
Moreover, only 7% of Gen-Y Facebook users are employed by a Fortune 500 company, according to the study.
Top Employers
Likely a sign of a down economy, the travel and hospitality industry now employs most Gen-Y Facebook users (7.2%), followed by consumer products companies (6.8%) and the US Government and Military (4.5%).
The US Military is the largest Gen-Y employer overall (3.2%), followed by second-ranked Walmart (0.53%) and third-ranked Starbucks (0.45%).
Deloitte (0.189%) and Hollister (0.187%) are ranked No. 11 and No. 12, respectively.
About the study: Data and analytics for the study were provided by Identified.com, the largest professional database on Facebook. The study was complied on November 15, 2011, among 4 million Gen-Y users (age 18-29) and roughly 1 million users listing a job entry; 90% of users were located in the US.
The Facebook Birthday Party
I have said this over and over and over again.
I’m not a fan of Facebook.
Too many games, changes in privacy settings and people pimping their multilevel marketing turned me off.
Twitter is more my style.
But Facebook shouldn’t be ignored, with 12 hundred trillion people on Facebook, more or less, your Mom, and best friend and your boss are probably on Facebook.
Do you know their birthdays? I mean, besides your Mom?
Doubtful.
But Facebook does.
And Facebook lets you and me toss a little birthday wish to those folks we are connected to.
It’s simple and easy to toss a little Facebook birthday party, just check in each day and send them a note.
But call your Mom too. And tell her you love her. She wants to hear that coming from your voice, not just on her Facebook wall.
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