BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Facebook’s UK division believes that the traditional company website may be on the verge of becoming obsolete in the face of social media alternatives.
Cnet reports that Stephen Haines, commercial director of Facebook’s U.K. operation, told crowds at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising conference that the interaction element of social media meant that company websites may in future become nothing more than reference points for contact details.
Boosting his arguement with some sturdy figures, Haines revealed that companies such as Starbucks and Coca Cola are seeing Facebook traffic on their pages weighing in between ten and 75 fold that of their company websites, largely down to the ‘like’ phenomenom. Visits to Coca Cola’s website in one month sat at 270,000, while the thumbs up icon on the social media website received 20.5 million clicks.
With over half of the UK population now on Facebook alone, it’s plain to see that if your bike business isn’t too, that’s an opportunity for free marketing gone begging. The bike industry has, to date, embraced Twitter at an astonishing rate – 749 trade and cycling names are listed here alone. BikeBiz executive editor @carltonreid has previously put forward a very strong case for bike shops to take social media seriously.
On average, Facebook users spend 28 minutes per day browsing.
If you’re not a fan of logging onto BikeBiz.com every day, you can keep track on stories of interest BikeBiz’s Facebook and Twitter.
BikeBiz staff are also found at @Jonharker,@marksuttonbike and @Carltonreid. A feed of industry jobs is found at @bikebizjobs.
