Social Media and Facebook: Knowing your consumer

I recently ran across an article written by James Rickman that included an abundant amount of data on Facebook and the consumer demographics for who is using this popular social media site. I thought this was a particularly interesting blog post, not only because I am a total data geek but also because a lot of people constantly ask me "why should my company be using Facebook, isn't that a site for my kids?" Here are some top statistics that show you just why:

• The 35+ age demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base. 
• The 55+ age audience grew 922.7% since 2008
• 35+ is the largest age group currently on Facebook

Another question is how often people are accessing Facebook and if your message will get across. Here are some great stats that touch on this as well:

• More than 400 million active users
• More than 25 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updated posted each day
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc) shared each week

With these numbers being so high, wouldn't you want to take part in being of those "pieces of information" that gets posted on a daily basis! So go ahead, sign up for Facebook, create a corporate group, link it into your blog, and post away.