One of the hardest things about operating smaller businesses is often competing with larger businesses that have marketing budgets equal to your yearly profits. Where and how do you compete? One of the best ways is through the use of the Internet, more specifically social media sites like Facebook. A little apprehensive about how good of a service Facebook can be? Some facts and figures might help.

Here are some interesting Facebook facts and figures.

Number of active users: over 1 billion. Number of mobile users: 600 million. That’s right, over half of the users access Facebook from their mobile phones. Number of likes since launch: 1.13 trillion. It’s crazy, thats 1,130 likes per person. Number of connections: Facebook's 1 billion users are connected to 140.3 billion other users. Talk about six degrees of separation! Number of locally tagged posts: 17 billion. The ability to add your location to posts was introduced in August 2010, and this statistic came from September 2012.

These are just a few Facebook facts associated with the recent 1 billionth active user milestone, reached in October. It’s amazing to think that 1/7th of the world’s population are active Facebook users. Imagine what the number would be if it wasn’t blocked in China?

So, what do these numbers mean for you? Well, first of all, it means a huge potential network of clients/friends. If 1 billion users are connected with 140.3 billion other users, that means that the average number of friends a user has is 140.3. Imagine running an ad campaign on any medium, having 140 of your closest friends see it, and share it with their friends. Your brand has the potential to go global and viral in a very short amount of time.

How do you leverage these numbers? Most companies use Facebook Ads, a service which allows you to place ads that users will see and potentially click on. If leveraged correctly, Facebook is one powerful marketing platform, regardless of the size of the company. If your company doesn’t have a presence on Facebook, you’re missing out on the potential it can bring. Call us. We can help you establish a presence.