Facebook reports that the social networking site is now used by 1 out of every 2 people in the U.K. As eMarketer reports, 30 million of the 62.6 million people in the U.K. are now on the most popular social networking site in the world, Facebook. That’s up from 25.6 million in September 2010.
If you look at it another way, Facebook was responsible for 7.5% of all Internet visits by U.K. Internet users in January 2011, which isn’t far behind the leader, Google, which was responsible for 9% of all U.K. Internet user visits during the same time period. The website that landed in the third position during that same period was YouTube, which was responsible for just over 2% of all U.K. Internet user visits. That’s a big gap between the two leaders and everyone else.
Where are you going to invest your online marketing time, effort, and money?
Facebook growth shows no signs of slowing down in the U.K., and as eMarketer reports, advertising investments will continue to grow as well. By 2012, social networking advertising investments are expected to grow to 6% of total U.K. ad spending. That’s twice as much as the actual social network ad spending in 2010, which was just 3% of total online ad spending.
With the new Facebook social plugin updates that were launched this month, including analytics enhancements for the Facebook Like button, marketers will undoubtedly focus even more attention on building brand awareness, recall, and loyalty through branded Facebook pages and across social media tools. U.K. consumers are spending a lot of time on Facebook, and brands that want to connect with those consumers need to be on Facebook, too. However, those brands need to add value, meaning, and usefulness to the Facebook experience, or users will disregard them.
Bottom-line, brands who want to connect with U.K. customers shouldn’t ignore Facebook. It’s there waiting for you with your customers actively engaged already. You just need to jump in and join the conversation without delivering the hard sell.
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
