The prominence and global reach of Facebook make it one of the most attractive (if not mandatory) sites for businesses to conduct their social media efforts.

 

Statista reported that a survey of U.S. Internet users who were using selected social media sites (as of April 2015), 72% used Facebook – by far the site with the highest use – while 23% accessed Twitter.

 

Facebook has been the dominant social site for years, and its popularity shows no signs of slowing.

 

Did you know that more than 1.1 billion people log onto Facebook every day? And that another 610 million people are active on Facebook at least once a month?

 

And if the use trend follows the past 5 years, those numbers are expected to increase.

 

In the United States and Canada alone, Facebook had 226 million monthly active users in the Second Quarter of 2016, according to Statista.

 

Then consider that Facebook recorded an astounding 1.71 billion monthly active users worldwide through the end of June 2016, with 1.13 billion logging into Facebook daily in the same month.

 

The monthly and daily rates represent 15% and 17% increases, respectively, year-over-year, according to Facebook's Second Quarter Report 2016. The same report announced mobile daily users shot up 22% year-over-year to 1.03 billion people.

 

It's not surprising that the lion's share of Facebook users are visiting the site on mobile. Facebook reported 1.57 billion monthly active users logged on with mobile devices through June 2016, up 20% year-over-year.

 

And to emphasize mobile's importance to social media, Facebook reported, “Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 84% of advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2016, up from approximately 76% of advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2015.”

 

Here are some other Facebook facts to ponder:

 

• 20% of all web page views in America happen on Facebook
• 510 new comments are posted every minute on Facebook
• Users spend an average of 20 minutes on Facebook each time they log in
• Nearly 30% of all Facebook users are 25 to 34 years old, the demographic with the highest percentage of users
• The highest Facebook traffic occurs in the middle of the week, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
• Half of all 18- to 24-year-olds log onto Facebook when they wake up
• People are most engaged on Facebook at the end of the week. Thursdays and Fridays have 18% better engagement rates than at other times.
• Local Facebook business pages jumped from 8 million in June 2012 to 16 million through May 2013

(sources: Zephoria.com, ExpandedRamblings.com)

 

With more than 1 billion daily users, Facebook offers outdoor businesses immense opportunities to connect with current and potential customers. Your marketing efforts are already meant to build off the enthusiasm that sportsmen and women show for their outdoor pursuits; Facebook is a natural extension of that. But in an ever-crowded world of pages and posts it's important to understand the playing field and the players if you want to be seen and heard. Think about how you can use the data here to your advantage and to improve your Facebook activity.