A quick “one-pager” released by iStrategyLabs shows some seemingly innocuous statistics about the proliferation of Facebook in the United States. Before we tear into the math, let’s set a couple benchmarks (US Census Bureau) to establish some perspective:
- there are about 307 million people in the US.
- 49% are male (approx. 151 million).
- 51% are female (approx. 156 million).
Now, here’s the math on Facebook over the last six months:
- January 4, 2009 there were 42 million Facebook users in the US.
- July 4, 2009 there were 72 million Facebook users in the US.
- an increase of 30 million users in 6 months.
- this means every day 165,000 people signed up…about 115 people every minute.
According to the numbers shown, 20% of Americans are on Facebook. We also know that about 72% of the US population has access to the Internet: meaning that 1 in every 3 people online in the US has an account.
So who’s signing up? The 55+ crowd showed fewer than 1 million accounts in January and by July that number sits at almost 6 million (an increase of 514%). The largest increase was among adults 35-54 with an additional 13 million people in that demographic signing up (now 20 million users). In fact, people over the age of 25 now account for 62% of all Facebook accounts.
So…should your non-profit be on Facebook?
Short answer…”Yes”.
Longer answer? Let’s look at how CNN faired with Facebook on the day of President Obama’s inauguration:
- before 2pm, there were 600,000 updates on CNN’s Facebook page.
- 4,000 people commented…every minute.
- Obama’s Facebook page showed more
than 4 million fans. - CNN saw 136 million page views by 3:30 in the afternoon.
- President Obama (as of posting) has more than 6 million followers.
Granted, your organization may not have the same appeal or promotion machine behind it…but…chances are you don’t need 136 million page views to hit one out of the park. What if only 5,000 people saw your page through the entire year and maybe only 5% of those became fans? What if you were able to engage that very small number to the tune of $100 a year? What if you were able to continue that growth through time?
If your math is the same as mine…that would mean by the end of Year 3…your group would be up by 750 core followers…and you’d have another $150,000 in the kitty.
1
space
