Friday, March 27, 2009

If you have a business you need a facebook page

Facebook isn't for your kids (not anymore)


If you have a small business, you need a facebook page... and you need it right now.

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Don’t look now, but the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.

Here are the latest stats on Facebook’s US audience gender and age demographics, according to the company:

Facebook US Audience Growth, Last 180 Days

Looking at Facebook US audience growth over the last 180 days, it’s clear that Facebook is seeing massive increases in adoption amongst users 35-65.

The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is still women over 55 - there are now nearly 1.5 million of them active on Facebook each month.



The biggest growth in terms of absolute new users over the last six month came amongst users 35-44. Over 4 million more US women 35-44 and nearly 3 million more US men 35-44 used Facebook in March 2009 compared to September 2008.


Facebook just went through another change and from a business point of view this is a very important change. Now Facebook offers RSS feeds, over the past year the number of 'applications' being able to 'write to' facebook has grown, but now YOUR facebook page can transmit and not just receive.

Pages are now a part of News Feed
From now on, posts from Pages you are a fan of will show up in your News Feed. You can hide their posts by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right corner of the post. If you would like to see posts from Pages you connected to in the past, click here. (copied right of my facebook's new *face*)


MySpace and Facebook have been battling for supremacy and from a small business owner point of view Facebook just crushed MySpace. From where I sit MySpace is for the kids with body piercings and tatoos, any website urls posted to a MySpace page get obfuscated at best or simply erased at worse. MySpace does not want you to use your Myspace page for your business (unless you are in the music industry). I have a MySpace page (http://myspace.com/localgoogleguru) and I keep it just so I can capture an potential audience I might otherwise not have access to, but Facebook is getting me more clients than I can keep up with!

MySpace offers 'vanity urls', in other words my original MySpace website address was http://myspace.com/123456 and the vanity url is http://myspace.com/nameIchoose now.

Facebook does not offer vanity urls, but MY facebook page skyrocketed my search engine rankings in ways I never imagined it could.

Addenda: Facebook did retract their postition on vanity urls and I grabbed mine, after giving it some thought I choose my full name rather than /localgoogleguru so my facebook url is now http://facebook.com/davidbrucejr and it did skyrocket to the top of Google: Google my name, David Bruce Jr

Before and After



Before Facebook, if you typed my name into Google you saw my more famous kin on the first few pages... One of my distant relatives owns a patent for the typeset every newspaper press uses, even today. Another of my kin was ambassador to England- kinda hard to out rank those people... Google shows 28,200, 000 websites that are about my name and my name sake(s)

Results 1 - 10 of about 28,200,000 for David Bruce Jr.
Google David Bruce Jr

The first two entries in Google are about my famous inventor relative, the third is someone with Bruce as a middle name
Guess who is number 4?

Facebook did that for me!!
And I've only had a Facebook page for 2 months

Here is the Google Entry for David Bruce Jr:
David Bruce Jr. - Washington, DC | Facebook
David Bruce Jr. (Washington, DC) is on Facebook. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected.
www.facebook.com/people/David-Bruce-Jr/1329852113

That number string is my Facebook account number (1329872113), if Facebook allowed vanity urls mine would be www.facebook.com/people/LocalGoogleGuru

I have a North Carolina client I do search engine marketing for, Stuart M Edwards owner of Camo4x4s, a North Carolina Hunting Videographer. His Facebook page also managed to make Stuart easier to find in Google

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Stuart+M+Edwards&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f

http://www.facebook.com/people/Stuart-M-Edwards/502463246


I'll be posting on developments with Facebook from the perspective of a local small business owner in coming articles





Maryland Search Engine Expert David Bruce

Local Google Advertising-
Google that phrase, then Call 301 363-8206 If you want YOUR company website to perform that well in Google.

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