SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social-media practices and issues.
Last week’s poll question: Is your business marketing itself using a Facebook Fan Page?
- Yes, our company has a fan page – 73.13%
- No, we do not have a fan page – 12.24%
- We don’t have a fan page now, but are considering it – 8.84%
- Facebook is not an outlet we care to use – 5.78%
I have a friend who refers to the presence Facebook and Twitter icons on a company Web site as the “f and the t.” It’s commonplace now for businesses to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker and other social networks to engage consumers, and the results of this poll only bear out how prevalent such behavior has become.
Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that online retailers are beginning to use Facebook for e-commerce, evidencing the fact that social networks are no longer merely a conversationally-oriented medium, but one focused on driving conversions as well.
But, what of the 26% of respondents who either currently don’t have a Fan Page or express no intention of using Facebook at all? I would like to know the rationale. Facebook has half a billion people now using it, 50% of whom log on every single day. It’s growing at a rate of nearly a million new users per day. Do those numbers alone not spell out to you the need to have a presence there?
Paul Chaney is an social-media marketing consultant, sought-after speaker and author of “The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media,” published by Wiley. Paul sits on the advisory boards for the Social Media Marketing Institute, Women’s Wisdom Network and Smartbrief on Social Media.
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I would suspect that there is some bias in this sample given that they are readers of Smart Brief for Social Media, so they are already prone to being on the leading edge of social media practices. If the same survey were conducted with a more mainstream lest socially savvy audience the results would be quite different.
I would also like to know the sample size – 73% of how many?
It's 303 readers. They're definitely not scientific polls, just interesting snapshots of what some of our readers are thinking. Thanks for reading!
Great results! This just shows that Facebook is becoming an important platform for companies to have a presence. Some companies have even chosen to have their Facebook Page to be their only website! I'm not surprised as it does make sense to have your website where you clients are.
Kris Olin, MSc (econ.)
Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide
Based on the results of past polls, I'm not convinced that the readership is completely comprised of leading edge social media devotees. More than anything, I think this testifies to the influence of Facebook.
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