Facebook Like Button: The Stats So Far
They're pretty much ubiquitous already, but do you remember way back when, to April, when Facebook Like buttons were launched? When Zuck hit London in June, the company announced 350,000 sites were using the buttons, with over 1bn impressions served daily.
So the volumes are enormous, but what's the impact for publishers? Facebook's Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky recently released a presentation that shared some juicy tidbits from major publishers (see below for full presentation).
Facebook Like Referrals & Engagement
Hefty increases in referral traffic, the presentation shows big impacts for major publishers including rises of 200% for Gawker and 190% for abc News. The stats also show that those Facebookers that are 'liking' are also heavier users of the sites.
Jobs search engine Simply Hired saw Likers undertaking over twice as many job searches and looking at 52% more roles, whilst visitors to video site Daily Motion, which receives 30,000 Likes daily, are watching 290,000 videos.
Facebook Like Users
These 'Likers' with their positive outlook, who are they? According to Facebook (who clearly targeted this presentation at newspaper giants) their median age is 34 compared to the average newspaper reader at 51. Stats nerds can insert their own gag here about declining newspaper readershp and statistical significance.
They're also more engaged with more than twice as many "friends" and visiting over 5 times as many external sites outside the blue comfort of the Facebook interface.
Five Facebook Like Tips for Publishers
- Stories that get more engagement include: touching & emotional, provocative debates, important news (sports wins were cited as an example) and simple questions e.g. Will England win the World Cup? (stop laughing, seriously)
- Include the Activity Feed, users who engage with this generate four times more page views than the average media site visitor
- Use Facebook insights to optimise page content: which users are logged in? what type of users like this article? what are people liking/sharing the most? where are the users liking?
- Sync your blog feed with your Facebook page, so every story appears in Fans' News Feeds
- Create Facebook Pages around specific events - these can generate up to five times engagement from users
Hat tip: Jemima Kiss at The Guardian.
Photo (cc) Retinafunk.
30 September 2010 by Sam Michel
Sam Michel is the founder of Chinwag and blogs here for work, and more randomly at Toodlepip. He runs Chinwag Jobs, Digital Mission and tends to focus on murky place where technology, community and marketing collide. You'll find him on twitter @toodlepip.
Sam Michel is the founder of Chinwag and blogs here for work, and more randomly at Toodlepip. He runs Chinwag Jobs, Digital Mission and tends to focus on murky place where technology, community and marketing collide. You'll find him on twitter @toodlepip.
