>Facebook Increases It’s Lead, MySpace Still in 2nd Place with Other Social Networks Gain Ground

>Social networking leader Facebook continued its momentum as it added millions of new users and people spent more and more of their time on the site, according to a new white paper from comScore. “The 2010 US Digital Year in Review” illustrates that Facebook accounted for 10% of ALL US page views in 2010, and three out of every 10 (30% ) US Internet sessions included a visit to Facebook. 

In addition to its tremendous increase in users Facebook grew significantly across nearly every performance metric in 2010. Facebook’s US audience grew to 153.9 million in December 2010, an increase of 38%, as it became the fourth-most visited online property, reaching nearly three out of every four US online users each month. Engagement metrics fared even better, with Facebook’s total time spent surging 79% year over year to 49.4 billion minutes and total page views growing 71% to 76.8 billion.

Facebook Increases Both Younger and Older Users While ‘Young Adults’ Decreased Slightly

The comScore analysis of visitors to Facebook and Twitter showed shifting user demographics during the past year. Facebook saw its 35-54 year old share of visitors decline 9% from 39% to 35.4%, while the younger than 18 segment increased 12% from 9.9% to 11.1%, while users 55 and older about 17% from 11.3% to 13.2%.

Twitter.com, meanwhile, saw a roughly 24% gain in the share of 18-34 year olds visiting the site, but those younger than 18 declined 46% from 17.5% to 9.5%. comScore analysis suggests this shifting composition may partially reflect a shift among younger Twitter users towards other communication vehicles and third-party Twitter apps.

In 2010 Facebook saw an significant growth in the number of people using Facebook, visiting more frequently, and viewing more content on each visit.
 

Myspace Continues to Lose Ground but Still Remains the # 2 Social Network

MySpace still maintains its hold on the number two ranking in the social networking category with 50 million visitors in December 2010.  The total audience declined 27% and time spent on the site declined 50% over the previous year. 
The business focused social networking site LinkedIn emerged as the third largest in the category with 26.6 million visitors in December 2010 Meanwhile, number four Twitter climbed to 18% to 23.6 million visitors in December 2010.

A few new social networking sites improved this year, as Tumblr.com surged 168% to 6.7 million monthly visitors and Formspring.me rose in popularity among younger social networkers and grew more than 1,000% in the past 12 months. 
 
Another worthwhile statistic to note indicates that 90% of Online Users visit social networking websites every month.  Social Networking websites accounted for 12% of the TOTAL time spent online in 2010 with the average online user spending more than 4.5 houses on social networking websites each month. 
 
Integration of social media marketing and use of social networking for SEO, online marketing and brand management is imperative for any business today.  Contact Social Marketing Builders today for a no-cost expert consultation on Social Network Marketing, SEO and online marketing at 816-842-7774.
 
Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
Internet, Social Marketing & Technology Expert
Internet Builder Consulting – Building BETTER Websites, Social Marketing and SEO Solutions since 1995
816-842-7774 Corporate Offices

Does Social Networking Bring Business?

Several educational offerings about Social Networking were offered at the 2009 NAHB IBS in Las Vegas this month sharing a wide range of ideas. Many different options were shared with direct examples of builders, real estate professionals and companies marketing via social networking groups. Myspace.com, Ning.com, Facebook.com, Activerain.com, LinkedIn.com and dozens of others portrayed an endless list of options to share a message.

The difficult aspect of social networking in marketing is correlating any resulting leads or sales. Any additional opportunity to reach prospective customers or place an ‘online billboard’ is beneficial yet there seems to lack a single direct method of converting social browsers to buyers. Most social networking websites are provided free of charge so a return on investment only includes the time required to collect, publish and update the information on each of the portals.

Marketing is either targeted or not; social networking is the new hot marketing idea (even though it has been around for years) though it has not yet been refined to a targeted marketing tool. Anyone considering the launch of a social networking marketing campaign should first start with a Blog followed by one or two of the thousands of other social marketing portals to practice upon. Blogs have always been well liked by the search engines so they are an excellent proven opportunity.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844

Building Business through Social Networking

Nearly everyone has heard of Myspace, Youtube and the other social networking giants even if they may not yet have an account. Mentioning Myspace to older relatives instantly brings the thought of Dateline ‘To Catch a Preditor‘ yet that is far from the actual truth as to what social networking websites are about. The Web 2.0 ideology brings to light the true social medium of the Internet connecting millions of people worldwide sharing ideas, information and products 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year.

The Internet now contains more than 500,000,000 domain names (website addresses) with hundreds of thousands more registered each week. Somehow companies continue to believe that 1 (one) single lonely website is going to be ranked high enough to reach all prospective buyers in all potential areas. Simply put one website cannot be everything to every search engine and the odds are a single website without any outside help will not be ranked well online. One option to improve the odds is using social networking websites to place the website address, company information and products or services on thousands of places worldwide.

One of the most popular business focused websites is http://www.linkedin.com/ enabling users to join for free, setup a professional profile, experience, website links, contact information and even testimonials. The Linked In website provides an online directory of business contacts, feeds content (your information and website) to search engines and functions as an online resume. Myspace http://www.myspace.com/ is typically known for teen and young adult visitors though more than 1/2 million visitors are over the age of twenty five (25). Builder Consulting setup a Myspace account years ago http://www.Myspace.com/BuilderConsulting and posts new websites launched, updated information, contacts and connects with other industry professionals worldwide.

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ or Ning http://www.ning.com/ and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ are other viable online sources for social networking. Whenever video is used on your website use YouTube to host the video, add your keywords and embed the video within your website. This provides double duty by freeing up resources on your website and reaching millions of potential customers using YouTube. This video from Mike Brown of Brown Midwest has been viewed dozens of times on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lauDSiZ_hN0 while also being featured on the home page of the company website http://www.brownmidwest.com/.

KEEP IN MIND that unlike traditional media or marketing what is posted online tends to stay online. Search engines cache information and webpages meaning they download and store the content on their servers to provide the fastest results for search queries online. Consider how many millions upon millions of websites are online then consider how fast the Search Results are shown when using Google or Yahoo. The search is being completed within the directory of pre-searched and ranked websites stored by the search engine. A search engine does not truly search the Internet; it searches the pre-determined list of websites and rankings already stored.

Social Networking Websites tend to be free but the content is still a reflection of your company, services and products. Ensure anything posted online accurately and professionally markets a business; online users will include or exclude your company based upon the ease of use, access to information and overall feel from your website or any third party source.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.builderconsulting.com/
Building Better Websites & Online Success Since 1995
913-814-8844 Corporate Offices