- There are over 500 million active users
- About 70% of Facebook users reside outside of the US
- Over 250 million active users reside in the US
- 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- The average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
For more details, please check Facebook Statistics or the demographics published at QuanCast.com
For strategical ideas on how to leverage Facebook strength and connection power, read the popular post by Tamar Weinberg: How to Use Facebook for Business and Marketing
As mentioned in the post, many major corporations hire application specialists to custom-make their presence on FaceBook. I would like to introduce a few easy and free tools provided by FaceBook or 3rd party developers. It won’t take long to implement and it’ll get you on the right track at a low cost.
Forward your contents to FaceBook
Automatically publish your WordPress post on your personal Facebook Profile or on your Facebook page
Reconnect with the networks you’ve built over the years. You may send frequent emails or newsletters to these connections. But as a friend on Facebook, your recent posts and activities are automatically published on their Profile Wall. If they are interested, you’ll turn an old connection into a warm lead.
Add a Facebook LIKE button onto your own web page
Just add a Facebook LIKE button onto your homepage or pages in your website. Your page’s thumbnails and links will show up on your visitor’s Profile Wall. His/her FaceBook friends will also be prompted by the action. Your website visitors therefore become a distribution channel through their Facebook user activities.
Login users with their existing accounts from Facebook
(the same feature applies for accounts from Twitter, Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn,…)
People are tired of remembering their usernames and passwords on dozens of websites. If your website asks for user sign-up and login, your visitor will likely not proceed to the registration process. If they are Facebook, Gmail, or Yahoo mail users, this will be big relief. Example: CNN.com allows for registration and login through an existing Facebook account.
My comments on CNN.com shows on my Profile Wall. All my Facebook friends see it.
Benefits:
* Build rich user profiles by enabling your visitors to import their profile data from their social network or email accounts.
* Create new accounts without registering and maintaining another new username and password.
* Display verified identity and user icon of a preferred network on blog comments.
This feature is not just limited to Facebook. On one of the DCS posts, I added comments on the DCS site through two other account names.
FaceBook Fan Club box on your web pages
Show your Fan Club and stream their latest activities from FaceBook back to your web pages
The DCS’s fan club block is shown on every blog page on the DCS site.
Another example for ABLS Youth Group 