Why isn’t your business spending more time on Facebook?

Originally posted by Todd Lucier @ Internet Marketing for Tourism.

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times square I’ll be the first to admit it. I wasn’t an early adopter of Facebook. I stood on the sidelines and looked sideways at what I perceived to be a big time suck. I even used my geeky tech expertise to block sites like Youtube and Facebook from our office router, so our team couldn’t waste any time down in that black whole that was sucking up everyone elses time.

How wrong was that? That’s precisely why we need to spend more time on Facebook, because our customers are there!

I’m often asked by tourism businesses, ”Which Web 2.0 service should I be focusing most of my effort towards?”

Instead of focusing our efforts on migrating people to our own Websites, Facebook is a perfect opportunity to interact with people right where they are already hanging out. It’s the digital equivalent of having billboard space on Time Square.

Today, our staff and I spend a great deal of time sharing our media across a variety of social media platforms. By far, the biggest bang for our efforts comes from time spent on Facebook.

FACEBOOK – by the Numbers

Let’s put the numbers reported by Nielson into their simplest terms.

People spend more time on Facebook than Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft/Bing, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined!

In January 2010 there were over 400 Million Facebook users. The amount of time the average American person spent on Facebook was 421 minutes per month (over 14 minutes per day).

Facebook on Handheld – Twice the Engagement.

Users of handheld devices view content, upload and engage with Facebook twice as much as computer users!
As a result, Facebook is investing heavily in the mobile platform, making access ubiquitous. I love how Chamath Palihapitiya talks about Facebook only having only .4 billion users currently. The goal of is billions of users, all over the world. Already Facebook is accessible in 70 plus languages. Watch the presentation from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona