Sounds scary does’nt it when you read that title? But not really if you watch TV, read magazines or do your work and pleasure online where there are advertisements. Pretty much at the bottom or end of all Fortune 100 ads is a link to www.facebook.com/theircompany
“An interesting dilemma that companies have been facing of late is what level of promotion is necessary for their website vs. their Facebook page. Recent campaigns show evidence that a few companies have broken traditional norms in directing traffic directly to their fanpage, surpassing their websites. What started as a means to an end of drawing people to websites is becoming an end in itself.” – this quote was taken from a recent webtrends study that showed companies are losing their traffic to facebook, you can read the full study from Webtrends here http://www.adgregate.com/Whitepaper/Webtrends-Adgregate_Social_Commerce_Whitepaper_03172011.pdf
Is this a bad thing? If you read my article I wrote on “Facebook Pages for Fans and Brands” – http://thesocialsponge.com/2011/03/07/facebook-pages-fans-brands/ you got a glimpse into the sheer numbers some of these large companies have in fan base on facebook. Coca Cola – 23,849,644 fans, Disney 18,590,242 fans, Oreo – 17,461,945 fans, to see more go to http://fanpagelist.com/category/brands/
So its very obvious that for more viewership companies are engaging in social media strategies and Facebook is the largest one going right now.
Rather then do their special on their company owned websites its more beneficial to put them onto their facebook pages and that makes sense in this current social media economy.
The traffic is down because they are not advertising their company sites or pushing traffic their right now so the study should be no suprise and should’nt set of any fire alarms. They all have great company web sites and when you visit their facebook pages they do push you back to their web sites but its not a strong push so naturally traffic is down.
Does this effect their company? Not at all, with their facebook, twitter, youtube and other social media hybrid sites they can see the number of eyeballs they have access to and monetise the results of their efforts pretty easily. Its no secret it costs a lot less to advertise on your own social media site then buying traditional advertising space, and companies are wising up to that.
As long as the large companies use these social media sites as hubs to increase their brand awareness and collect information on the users by getting emails if they can, or cell phone numbers for text messaging they are not losing anything other then web site traffic and gaining online customers and an online presence, that is worth a lot of money to them. It does not seem like they are ignoring their company web sites they are just taking advantage of the current social media trends to get more customers. Social media sites are not meant to replace the company web site, they just add value to the company.
