What you should know about Facebook!

Facebook is the most commonly used social media channel existing today. With a growing number of competitors Facebook continues to climb up the ladder of successful social media networks with over 1,110,000,000 users per month. As technology rapidly develops the way people use facebook changes, for example over 680,000,000 users are known to access Facebook through a mobile phone device which means it can be utilised anywhere and everywhere. With over 700 billion minutes spent using Facebook per month, they must be doing something right. On a social level Facebook allows users to share status' about their everyday lives, regain contact with family and friends, share photos, videos and also "like" pages and personal interests. In the business world Facebook is an amazing networking platform as it gives companies a chance to engage with a wide audience in a modern, easy and simple way, and best of all it's completely free! Having on average over a million links shared on Facebook every 20 minutes the simplicity of using Facebook has become one of, if not the best online networking and strategical marketing site to enhance lead generation, reach and find potential clients and new business opportunies for large and small businesses worldwide. Some may say that in the 21st Century world, there is no such thing as offline. A major business benefit of using Facebook is the customer engagement and how easy it is through Facebook. Statistics show that there are 20 million apps uploaded on Facebook every day, which means using Facebook makes it easier for companies to control their marketing strategies by being able to control posts, view their competition, follow and share brand values easily in a cost effective way around the world, merely by the click of a button. With Facebook being so popular and successful in hundreds of countries around the world it is in fact, hard to fault it. However there are some limitations such as character count, Facebook allows 20,000 characters per post which means that posts are limited to the amount of information they can include. Also from a business perspective with regards to engaging with potential clients Facebook only allows a user to have up to 500 liked pages which means not all your interests can be "liked" on Facebook. In addition there are also limitations on groups that are created as they are restricted to having 5000 members which could effect companies if they have more than 5000 fans/followers that they would like to access within a specific group. In today's society children are learning to use the online world before they can even write properly which means they are open to most sites on the Internet such as Facebook. In the last 5 years the age restrictions with regards to creating a Facebook profile have changed from being 18+ to now being 13+. This is a large risk as younger children aged 13 could be coming across content that may not be suited to them, however Facebook are using their demographics to cater to a wider audience which in turn is making it more successful. Facebook's most common audience today is 18-34 year old's and statistics show that 49% of people in this specific age bracket check Facebook every morning when they wake up, as though it is being used as a replacement of the morning newspaper. I feel that Facebook attracts this audience because technology is advancing so rapidly that young adults aged 18-24 are using it to keep in touch with friends, socialise with new people and some may say it's like an online diary of thoughts. I think that as a socialising platform, Facebook is mainly aimed at the younger audience as they are more up to date with how sites are changing and how to utilise their properties fully. I think that Facebook doesn't have a large audience over the age of 50 as not many people have been around technology as it has advanced and may not have the skills to optimise the sites full potential. Never underestimate the power of social media. Using social media sites is all about attracting attention and making your posts go viral. With strategical sites and frameworks advancing daily, sites such as Hootsuite, SproutSocial and other analytics sites are now making it easier to know when your audience is online. The best time to post on Facebook has been commonly known to be from 9am to 7pm on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday however depending on the day the crucial times may differ. Using Facebook programmes such as Insights will show you when the best day and time is to share your posts. It is vital to ensure posts are not containing explicit content or language and the Facebook terms and common social conduct are not being broken. Also it is important to remember a Facebook audience is mostly very large so once a post has been sent it is out there for the public to see, although posts can be deleted it is crucial to remain professional and appropriate when posting on social media sites, purely because the consequences may backfire massively. Hannah Khan Digital 2