In the wake of an upbeat earnings report yesterday, a much-needed breath of fresh air has lifted Facebook’s stock and the hopes of the social media world in general. While everyone and their grandmas have been championing social media as the next frontier in advertising and marketing, the ROI had been a moving target - here, there, everywhere. But now, we finally have some primetime results.
- Facebook shares jumped up 20% from yesterday, at the time of this writing.
- User activity has significantly increased across the board since last year. Monthly active users (MAUs) increased 26%, daily active users (DAUs) 28%, and mobile MAUs 61%.
- Mobile advertising revenue was $153 million. Not bad for a revenue stream that didn’t exist 7 months ago.
- Overall Q3 revenue grew 32% to $1.26 billion from a year ago.
Much of the growth is arguably attributed to all the new money-making products rolling out of the Menlo Park-based company’s R&D and marketing labs: Custom Audiences, Facebook Exchange, Offers, mobile app ads, and more.
Now that you have the facts, you might be wondering how you can capture some of this magic. The trick is not to overdo it. Marketing is all about smart planning and design. You have to have the right content released at just the right time. Here are some quick stats and tips to consider:
- When a brand posts twice a day, the second post attracts only 57% of the likes and 78% of the comments as the first post.
- A whopping 91% of adults online use social media regularly!
- Among smartphone users, 73% of them access social networks through apps at least once per day.
- In four years, more than half of retail dollars in the U.S. will be influenced by the web.
If you need tools to launch your social-media effort, check out our social marketing page for practical and innovative features, like Social & Mobile Voting, Facebook Tab Editor, Facebook Coupons, and Facebook Like-gating. Get started today, because there is new hope.
