Chris Crum

By Chris Crum – Mon, 02/15/2010 – 3:59pm.

Some Things About Facebook to Consider

According to data from Compete, Facebook has surpassed Google as the top source of traffic for major portals like Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. In December, 15% of traffic to these sites came from Facebook and MySpace. 13% from just Facebook. They say it’s among the top traffic drivers for other types of sites as well.

In a recent WebProNews article, I asked if it is becoming increasingly less critical for businesses to have websites, when they can just have things like Facebook pages and Google Place pages. The discussion is more complex than just that (feel free top participate here), but the general point is that you can have a strong web presence without having an actual web site (although I still recommend having one in most cases).

By Facebook’s most recent stat counts, the site has over 400 million active users. Half of them log on each day. Over 35 million upate their status each day, with over 60 million status updates posted each day. Over 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each week, over 3.5 million events are created each month, and there are over 3 million active Pages on Facebook.

Over 1.5 million local businesses have active pages. Over 20 million people become fans of Pages each day, and Pages have created over 5.3 billion fans. The average user has 130 friends. These last few stats say a lot about the power of Facebook for businesses.

Facebook pages can be found in Google (often near the top of results pages), and there are things you can do to make them more powerful. I discussed this in more detail here. Basically, it comes down to participation, integration with other online presences, not being annoying to your fans, and hosting events (which can also lead to participation).

Promotion of your page is key as well. Use prominent links on your site(s), use the Facebook Fan Box or something like it. You can promote it in your author bio on articles/blogs, in email newsletters, on other social media profiles, in your Google profile, on your business card, in your signage, in your email signature, and in your ads, to name a few.