The State of Social Media

Compete recently released “The State of Social Media: First Edition,” which discuses data illustrating how consumers use social media sites. Among the findings in the report is that half of Facebook’s active user base signs in every day.

According to Compete, Facebook boasts more than 800 million active users, and half of these sign in every day. In November, Facebook drew 160 million unique visits, displaying growth of 2.5 percent from the previous month and 22.8 percent year-over-year.

The first step for marketers is to understand that the way to interact with Facebook and use it to “garner traffic, cultivate new customers, and engage with existing ones” is to dig deeper into the data, according to Compete.

The top keyword referral for Facebook.com in November was “login facebook,” followed by “yahoo mail,” “craigslist,” “facebook login” and “fcebook,” according to Compete.

“Here we uncover that Facebook sees these companies as assets to its brand, in whatever regard, and it feels that investing in connections between Facebook and these sites will further its success,” Compete notes in its report. “A marketer running a multi-channel campaign centered around Facebook may want to start with one of these affiliated sites as to increase the visibility of the entire campaign.”

The top growing site referrals for Facebook.com in November were meebo.com, bestbuy.com, toysrus.com, walmart.com and kohls.com.

The heavy bent toward retails sites here isn’t surprising, given the holiday season when the research was conducted.

The top growing site destinations for Facebook.com in November were walmart.com, wizard101.com, pinterest.com, target.com and amazon.com.

Compete also notes that Google+ boasted nearly 15 million unique U.S. visitors in November. The top keyword referral for Google+ in November was “google plus,” followed by “google,” “google+” and “google +.”

Google.com was the top destination people went to after Google+ in November, followed by facebook.com, youtube.com, yahoo.com and aol.com.

For Twitter, the top keyword referrals in November were “kim kardashian twitter,” “kamron mostofi twitter,” “justin bieber,” “justin bieber twitter” and “india westbrooks.”

The top growing site destinations for Twitter in November were tmblr.co, meebo.com, mevio.com, cafemom.com and hulkshare.com.

Sources:

http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/25/free-report-the-state-of-social-media/