By Joan Stewart
If you still aren’t on Facebook because you’re late to the party, recent traffic statistics should convince you to hop onboard NOW.
A chart at social media strategist Sally Falkow’s blog shows that Facebook’s traffic is almost dead even with traffic from Google. Facebook now has more than 400 million users worldwide, up from 350 million in December.
Here’s what that means to you:
If you’re not on Facebook, get going. You can find instructions for almost every part of the site in Facebook’s Help Center, which you can always access on the bottom right corner of your screen. You’ll start by reading the Getting Started guide, and then creating your profile.
If you’ve been on Facebook awhile and you’re using it for business, be sure to create a Facebook fan page. This is the only place that Facebook lets you promote, and it will help solidify your brand, build a huge fan club and interact with your fans by doing everything from passing along helpful tips and videos to offering them coupons. (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.)
By the way, if you ran into problems on Facebook this past week, don’t despair. We did too. So did many of our friends. Feeds weren’t feeding properly. We couldn’t wrap text around photos in our Notes. And even today, we’re finding that many links in the Facebook Help Center aren’t working.
Such is life when a company grows too big, too fast.
I like Facebook far more than Twitter. Facebook is more personal and allows for greater connection with people.
Twitter is a rapid stream of information flowing by, and it’s hard to tell what’s relevant and interesting.