Internet Usage Statistics – Recent Quick Facts and Figures
Did a presentation last week for a group of mortgage loan officers. Many are reluctant to jump into online and social media marketing, so I presented some facts that are pretty hard to ignore.
Search
- 66% (204 million) of US consumers use search engines to research purchases and other decisions.
- Approaching 600 million users worldwide
- 30% of all Internet users in the World
- 44% of all US Internet users have a Facebook account (88m)
- Approaching 100 million users, half of which are in the US.
The fun part is that Search, Facebook, and LinkedIn are still on a skyrocket trajectory and aren’t slowing down a bit. Furthermore, it shows that online has truly reached critical mass and has become ingrained in our daily lives.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t include Twitter in there, well, I didn’t recommend it to the group of loan officers. The argument was that setting up their website bio pages, optimizing a LinkedIn account, and getting a Facebook page up and running would give them the best value for their time and a decent base of visibility. Plus, once those are set up, not a lot of updates and posts need to be made — unlike Twitter.
While LinkedIn doesn’t have the numbers of Facebook, it is more tightly focused, since mostly all of its members are there for business and networking reasons. It’s great for loan officers looking to stay in front of their community online, it’s free, and requires little maintenance and updating once it’s set up properly.
A Facebook Page is also free and doesn’t require a lot of time after set up. Nothing will get you blocked or unliked faster than chronic over-posting, so I recommended that the loan officers post only once every week or two. If they can take the leap in their mind to post something they find interesting in the moment it happens, posting will feel like it takes even less time.
All told, lots of good nuggets to discuss when developing a presentation for a specific group of people. More to come.
