The mighty giant has fallen. Well at least fallen to #2 for this week.
According to Hitwise, Facebook managed received more visits than Google during the week of March 7th through March 13th, making it the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.
While this in no way sounds an alarm about the Google search dominance, it does reinforce the idea that social media, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are important elements of an online marketing program. With Facebook and YouTube as the numbers 2 and 4 overall sites on the web (according to Alexa.com), can you afford to ignore that kind of traffic.
Another thought-provoking stat – The average visitor to Google spends about 9 minutes a day on the site. The average visitor to Facebook spends almost 40 minutes a day and the average YouTube browsers spends over 22 minutes a day. This is like having a billboard on the freeway with traffic whizzing by at 70 miles per hours or having the same billboard on a busy street during rush hour where a driver is creeping along and has time to look around and actually read the billboard.
Google is for hunters on a mission. Bag the site your searching for and move on. Social media sites are more like home – prop your feet up and relax.
If you aren’t using social media or are totally confused by it, take heart. There are painless ways to ease into it without taking the head first plunge into the abyss.
Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, hosting, search engine optimization and social media marketing for small and medium businesses.