All along newspapers have been struggling with Google and how it “uses” their content to fill search results, both on Google News and Google.com. Well, consumer usage of news has shifted:
Hitwise data indicate that visitors from Facebook.com are more loyal to News and Media websites than are visitors from News.Google.com. In particular, among the top 5 Print Media websites in the week ending March 6, 2010, 78% of Facebook.com users were returning visitors compared to 67% from Google News. The figures are almost identical for Broadcast Media, with a 77% returning rate for Facebook.com compared to 64% for Google News. – Facebook Visitors Come Back Again and Again (HitWise)
If you think about it, this makes some sense. A lot of the activity on Facebook is the sharing of outside links – many of which would be to news sites. Consumers are using Facebook to share news and topics that are important to them, as well as to have a conversation around those links.
So why should businesses care? Well, if you advertise on either Facebook or Google, you should understand the behavior of the people using those sites. Facebook allows people to get information from others they trust, but Facebook isn’t really used to seek out purchasing information (yet). There’s not much doubt that Google is used for searching, which is further down the purchasing funnel than browsing. Most ads on Facebook are ignored (which is a bit of a problem for them), whereas people have a hard time distinguishing ads from organic results on Google. Google would seem to still be the place for advertising, but businesses should definitely have a presence on Facebook (fan page).
If you have advertised on both Google and Facebook and would be willing to share how your campaigns fared, please do.
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