We have asked our digital apprentice Sophie Coombs to have a look at the journey of Facebook.
Oh how it’s grown up! Oh how I’ve grown up with Facebook!
In almost every sense of the word, Facebook is THE biggest of the ‘famous four’ social networking sites (the others being Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn). With over 2.4 billion monthly active users*, Facebook is most definitely at the top of the social media chain.
It wasn’t always Mr. Zuckerburg’s intentions for Facebook to become the giant that we know it as today …
In celebration of Facebook turning 16 we’re looking at the stats of the site that grew from a platform for university alumni to home of (almost) everyone.
We’re also trying to get our heads around the fact that some users weren’t even born when Facebook was created!
The average monthly change in business page likes is 0.13%*.
0.13%!
It is much more difficult to get people to ‘like’ your Facebook business page than ever before, and this stat certainly cements it!
We often tell our clients that if people are engaging with their content, then they shouldn’t worry about whether their likes are going up or down. Engagement rates are a much better reflection of how their content is doing.
The average engagement rate for Facebook posts is 3.6% and the average organic reach for a Facebook post is 5.5%*.
Post engagement rates have dropped hugely over the years, thanks to over-saturated timelines and Facebook using business pages to monetise the network.
We’ve found that most of our clients’ engagement rates are much higher than these, especially for our B2C clients.
If your business’ engagement rates seem to be low, then Facebook advertising may be the way forward!
Facebook users spend 38 minutes per day using the platform*.
If people are, on average, spending over half an hour each day on Facebook, then it is worth considering if that is the right platform for you and your business.!
Within your business page insights you can find when your followers are most active on Facebook, which is great guideline for when to share your content.
1.4 billion people use Facebook Groups*.
Recently there has been a boom in Facebook groups for businesses, and we’re guessing it’s because over 1 billion people use them.
Plenty of business owners create an industry-specific group for members of that community to network in, and will drop a sales pitch every so often. Other Facebook groups are solely for selling services or products. Either way, they’re a great way to network and grow your business.
42% of users took a Facebook break in the last year*.
We found this stat particularly interesting. There are a handful of reasons why people would choose to take a ‘Facebook break’, but we couldn’t quite believe that almost half of the platform’s users did so last year!
If you’ve ever taken a ‘Facebook break’, we’d love to know your reasonings … we’re sure there may be a few of you!
So tell us what you love or hate about Facebook and if you are not sure if your business has a place on Facebook or whether Facebook has a place in your business, then drop us a line on info@jandpr.com and we can have a chat and help you.
*Statistics have been taken from https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/.
