So we thought it would be a great exercise to bring everyone together in an open forum to share their knowledge on social media, digital marketing, and how to best utilise tools for business success.
Yesterday morning we got everyone together at Cloudland in Brisbane for what was a very productive gathering, and in the true sense of sharing information, I'm going to put some of the key insights here for everyone to benefit.
We even managed to book in Natalie Lovett, our very busy Facebook representative, to fly up from Sydney and talk about all the latest happenings with the social media giant.
Brendan Neil, who helps Traffika identify and develop new clients, takes the stage to ask some key social media questions.
Stats & Data
To start let's go through some of the data the Nat shared with the group. It's amazing to see just how much activity there is for Australians on Facebook.
There are:
- 11 million active Australian users, with around 6 million of us logging in daily (between 60-70%)
- A staggering 6 million Australian Facebook users access the site on their mobile phone, which is around 55% of the total Australian users.
- Each day 10,000 new Aussies sign up to Facebook.
- On average we spend 25 mins on the site each session with an average of 113 page views per user
- We upload 10m Facebook photos every day
In terms of site activity, the following pie chart shows the break-down of where we spend our time. According to Natalie this data has only just been released, so you saw it here first people!
In terms of general data, when CPC ads are shared with a social context -- that is, the ads show which of your friends also like it -- receive a 68% increase in ad recall and a 200% increase in message awareness.
For those who are wondering if their brand will ever gain traction with a social media audience, over half of all social media users now follow a brand, effectively allowing that brand to target them with content in their daily social media activity.
Sam from Lorna Jane wins one of the coveted Facebook T-Shirts
One of the more scary statistics for Facebook Page owners was that only 5-16% of your fans are seeing the content you're publishing through your wall.
This is due to the algorithm called Edge Rank, a metric that determines your most engaged fans and prioritises your content into their News Feeds. In short, Facebook will only serve your content to fans who have an affinity with your Page, that is, they've liked, commented, shared, or interacted with your content in the past. All other less-engaged fans simply carry on blissfully unaware of your brand's activity. There are strategies to improve your Page's Edge Rank and increase the percentage of people who see your content which I'll be putting together into a guide over the next couple of weeks.
The Future of Facebook
We also talked a about the future of Facebook at the workshop and Nat gave some great insights on where the medium is headed in the next wave of updates.
Although it has slowed down in recent months, Facebook Timeline is here to stay and will be rolled out to all users soon. The delay has been caused by its popularity among users and the subsequent burden on the Developer application and the site itself. I'm 90% sure we will see a Timeline equivalent for Facebook Pages very soon as well, so stay tuned for that.
We also asked about the recent stoppage of Facebook Deals in Australia. According to Natalie this is due to a number of issues with the mobile platform, so the project has been put on hold for development.
Facebook's core values include Moving Fast, with a heavy emphasis on "breaking things" as a way of making them better.
One thing that became apparently clear for me during this workshop was exactly where Facebook sits between our lifestyle, our social identity, and our social connections. Facebook is the technology, the platform, and the "glue" that binds all of these elements together and facilitates meaningful social connections on a mass scale. From a brand's perspective, you can think about Facebook in exactly the same way.
As for the future of Facebook, it will be striving to make these social connections as rich and ubiquitous as possible by continuing to develop its own technology platform and hooking into as many other channels as possible (music, news, books, television, films, sport, gaming, etc). One thing is for sure, we're going to see some very exciting and rapidly changing times ahead!
One of the groups discuss how to focus social media communication on a local level.
Thanks!
Overall this was a fantastic exercise and produced some highly specific insights that I hope all of our clients can benefit from. We'd like to extend a very big THANK YOU to everyone who came and participated.
If you have any ideas to incorporate into our next workshop, or if you'd like to come along, just add in a comment below or give us a call on 1300 853 597.
