Part (ii):  How Gerber Uses Facebook?
To understand how Gerber uses Facebook one must understand what Facebook is.  Facebook is a social networking website that was originally designed for college students, but is now open to anyone 13 years of age or older which has transformed the way the entire world communicates.  Facebook has developed into the fastest growing website in history and recently became the number one website searched on the internet bypassing Google.  There is even a movie out called “The Social Network” telling the story how Facebook began.
Here are some extremely interesting statistics about Facebook:
  • More than 500 million active users
  • 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
  • Average user has 130 friends
  • People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
  • There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
  • Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
  • Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
  • More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
  • There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  • People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
  • There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products
With these statistics it is clear why Gerber has integrated Facebook into their marketing strategy for building strong brand recognition, increasing awareness on new products and the future growth of their company.  The real question is how do they use Facebook?
  • Integrating it with their website and all advertising
  • Marketing campaigns
  • Searching for their next star
  • Communicating with their clients
  • Gaining Market Share
By integrating Facebook into their website they capture more people searching to become part of the Gerber community where they can keep their clients or potential clients informed on the most updated news and events on the company.  By doing this they have positioned themselves well to carry out any marketing campaigns.  For example, start healthy stay healthy resource center or as previously discussed the next generation Gerber baby.  In addition, by integrating Facebook into their website they allow for better communication with their clients which will lead to an increased market share since Facebook allows 24/7 communication with their client base.
In summary, with a large corporation like Gerber using Facebook with the statistics provided above it would be wise to keep track of where they are going and how they are using Facebook.  The statistics are amazing when you think about the impact of having almost 217,000 participants in their next generation contest and over 225,000 people who like them on their Facebook page as of January 31, 2011.  Imagine the impact on their competition like “Enfamil” who has yet to adopt this into their marketing strategy.
Please check back next week for our posting of Series I part (iii) called “My Participation in the Next Generation Gerber Contest”
Paul Bradley Smith
Social Media Strategist/Blogger
E-mail: paul@smitherswebsolutions.com
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