On Friday, Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced that the social network had just attracted its 400 millionth member. Guess it’s going to be around for a while then.
In New Zealand, Facebook now has 1,220,920 members — and it’s friending its way into Kiwis’ lives fast.
Both locally and internationally, marketers are extremely keen to learn more about social networks — it’s become abundantly clear that today’s consumers expect major brands and companies to be present and active on the key social networks. If they’re not around, consumers are first surprised, then angry and eventually vitriolic. Tough reality, but that’s the 2010s for you.
If you’ll pardon the slight commercial intrusion: if you’re one of those marketers keen to learn about the new breed of tools collectively called 2.0, you’ll be interested in our upcoming series of ecourses on what we’re calling MARKETING REBOOTED — the things that marketers need to know to flourish in a digital world.
The MARKETING REBOOTED ecourse starts on March 1. We’re keeping the numbers low for this first programme, so if you’re interested, please drop us an email at editor (at) marketingweek.co.nz. Thanks.
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Kiwi TV starts playing catch-up :: StopPress :: Breaking news from New Zealand Marketing magazine // Feb 9, 2010 at 11:34 am
[...] Facebook Hits 400 Million [...]
Wow, even if only 50% are active accounts, that is still a huge number of New Zealanders!
Indeed. And Facebook quickly becomes an ongoing obsession — which is why the social network has been able to overtake Trade Me so quickly in terms of numbers of visits to the site.
And I have heard great things about the demographic targeting of their ads. Have you done some Facebook ads Michael?
Yes I have. And you’re right — the targeting is superb. You can promote just to Kiwis, segmented by age bands, gender and — this is especially useful if you know your niche — by keywords linked to descriptions on their profiles. So if for example you’re selling a product aimed at those who love knitting, you can specify “knitting” as a keyword. Facebook’s Ad service will tell you immediately exactly how many people match those criteria, so you can determine whether your campaign is viable or not.
Naturally, the better the fit between your product and the user’s interests, the higher the clickthrough.