Many professionals, ranging from environmental consultants to HR professionals, C-Suite executives at F1000 companies to small retail store owners, often ask me about Facebook once they hear what I do for a living.  The conversation usually starts with this statement - "I can see how people use it personally to keep in touch with family and friends.  It is always good to catch up with someone I haven’t seen in a while.  However, I just don't see how it can impact my business.  Can it really?”

Last summer, in my blog post Wonder Why Business are Flocking to Facebook, I shared some trends that were pretty impressive.  And, a little over a year later the trends and Facebook stats continue to be more and more impressive.

I recently saw this Silicon Alley Insider article with Comscore data and was amazed.   In August, the overall time spent on Facebook surpassed Google.  Yes, Google. 

Now, even though you may say well, we use Google to search and find stuff and we don’t spend that time on the site, the sheer volume of how many of us uses Google daily and how dependent we are on search is insane.   To think that Facebook passed Google in total time on their site means something different in my opinion – it means if you were slow to the game of developing a Facebook strategy and have remained on the sidelines waiting to see if this is just a trend, you need to stop procrastinating.   Businesses need to go to the people even if they are not 100% sold on the concept. You don't have to be sold when the people, the buyers, are on Facebook.

We have invested more on LinkedIn and Twitter than on Facebook over the past year and still have seen:

• Over 1,400 visits have come to cg as a result of our Facebook presence
• 912 of them, or 65%, are new visitors and many have become members
• 482 of them are repeat visitors, and those repeat visitors spend 10:10 on average on cg.  That is way above average on social media sites
• We have amassed 125 fans of cg on Facebook organically

Now, these numbers are not nearly as strong as how many visits are driven by LinkedIn – which is nearly four times as much, but nonetheless, they are pretty impressive given the effort or lack thereof, we have made.  Now, what happens when we have thousands of Facebook fans and we have a well thought out Facebook strategy?  We often wonder…but the potential becomes clearer each and every day as does our focus on this as key component in commonground’s future success.  

Not all that long ago, most of us could not imagine buying stuff over the web.   In 2009, 63% of the people in the US made an online purchase according to Internet Retailer.    

“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” Charles Darwin

Business evolves.  Has yours?