Do you ‘like’ that button? Facebook button now on two million sites

by Emily Wilkinson, posted on 5 October, 2010 at 3:05 pm, filed under Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

True or False: People trust their friends, so are more likely to buy a service/product based on their friend’s recommendations. True – we all know how strong word of mouth is, but now its word of click! Brands can utilise this opportunity as more consumers are now trusting information from ‘friends’ on social networks( e.g.Facebook) rather than sales messages direct from company advertising.

A recommendation from friends and family members is nothing new, but the implementation of the ‘like’ button last year was another step closer to shaping our online world to match our offline one. Word of Mouth and personal recommendation has always been a traditional yet powerful tool for brands securing business and online is no exception, it is just a modern evolution of our social behaviour.

The Facebook ‘like’ button was launched in February 2010 on Facebook and then launched onto the wider web in April, and has since been added to more than 2 million websites. Facebook recently released information about these ‘likers’:

  • They have, on average, 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user (approx 130 friends)
  • They are more engaged and interested in content on Facebook
  • They click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user
  • The average age of a ‘liker’ on a news site is 34

Implementing social plugins means that when a person clicks ‘like’ on a website, that person’s own Facebook page is updated, displaying to all of their friends that this person ‘likes’ this site and includes a link back to the site and makes the article discoverable through search on Facebook.

Publishers in the USA have reported increases in traffic since adding social plugins and have noticed that the users on their site are more engaged and stay longer when referred to these links by their friends.

By sharing good content online, brands can extend their reach and exposure into different social circles as well as maintaining loyalty within their existing networks.

Statistic source: www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-media/value-of-a-liker/150630338305797