Is Facebook Still Relevant?

With the number of social media platforms increasing consistently and younger generations flocking towards the newest and trendiest sites, is owning a Facebook page still a relevant marketing strategy?

The Facts

Excel chart: original data Jetscram

As can be seen in the chart above, the average age of Facebook users has increased, with 35-54 year olds now occupying the largest slice of the pie. Compared to Facebook’s early years this is quite a shift, indeed, between 2011 and 2014 it lost 25% of its teenaged users whilst the number of over 55s using the site increased 80% in 2013 alone.

However, this may not be a bad thing for advocates of Facebook since the younger generations are not likely to be the biggest spenders, with most still in school, unemployed, on low wages and/or paying off student debts.

In fact, with an older age demographic Facebook may be a better platform for businesses to engage with than other social media sites which attract a younger crowd. For instance, Instagram with 53% of users between 18 and 29.

Although the age demographic of Facebook has changed over the years it has remained equally attractive to the urban, suburban and rural communities and is used by people of every educational background and income level as well as by different ethnicities and nationalities.

Moreover, on average users spend longer on Facebook than on any other site, suggesting the fall in popularity with under 18s does not mark the end of its usefulness to businesses or advertisers.

Google Images*

However, this does not necessarily make Facebook a dead cert for successful business use. To be sure of a decent ROI (Return On Investment) social media profiles must be kept updated and must capture and retain the attention of users. Extremely challenging in a world where we are faced with over 5000 adverts a day (from food packaging to online pop-ups).

Creativity is key, and this takes time and energy. It’s been suggested effort is better concentrated on strategies such as email marketing as this has a proven track record of being more profitable, with a higher percentage of users clicking through to the business website or campaign page.

Despite this argument for email marketing over social media, can you really expect people to click on your email offer if they’ve never really heard of you? And worse still, emails from a low-profile business may be relegated as spam.

Facebook, with its exceptional membership stats and wide demographic, is a great base for engagement. Social media is (surprisingly) designed for socialising so setting aside time every week to upload new content and reply to potential customers can prove beneficial in the long term.

Engagement is key – it’s probably worse to own a Facebook page and not use it or to use it infrequently and badly than it is to now own one at all.

And what about Twitter?

Well, whilst Twitter incites engagement, Facebook boats a significantly larger membership base (1.3billion to Twitters 288million active monthly users) and so immediately offers a larger potential audience. Twitter’s demographics are also not as diverse, with the majority of users from more affluent backgrounds, urban and male.

Although Twitter delivers a higher click through rate on paid-for adverts, Facebook wins when it comes to traffic referral (e.g. direct traffic, social referrals and search traffic); driving 20% more traffic to external sites than Twitter.

At the start of this post I was ready to write Facebook off as an irrelevant and dated social site for business – merely a place for mothers to check up on their children’s partying habits at university and to reconnect with cousins they haven’t seen for 30 years. However, when you compare the length of time users spend on Facebook compared to other social media sites it appears there’s still an argument for maintaining a presence on Facebook.

Ultimately, Facebook is a site to show the ‘human side’ of the business, to build a friendly relationship with potential customers, discover what they’re talking about and aim to develop the business accordingly. Email marketing is more about informing subscribers about news and upcoming projects rather than engagement; and Twitter, whilst being a popular site for users to catch up with events in real-time, has a narrower demographic and does not encourage traffic referrals as well as Facebook.

Its clear Facebook is far from finished when it comes to social media marketing and cannot be easily dismissed. Does this fit in with your view? Or were you more like me and considered Facebook to be on the way out? Do you still consider Facebook to be past its peak?
 

Sources: bufferapp; adespresso; Business Solutions Center; Jetscram; Investopedia; abc.net; pewinternet; google images*; CosmicUK

 *data referenced on several sites in various graphs/images