Social Media News

Every so often we look at our global B2B audience and see where our posts resonate around the world. While we understand that our audience is mainly in the US, we do have a growing following in other countries. It is worth looking at to determine things like relevant content, targeted advertising, time of day to publish posts and tweets, and even speaking opportunities. This is also information that is interesting to our publisher as they pursue foreign rights for The B2B Social Media Book.

I looked at two different sources to determine our global audience, and I was surprised how much they correlate. First I pulled Google Analytics from the past three months and looked at the top 10 countries of the site visitors. Then I looked at the top 10 countries from the Facebook Reach metrics over the same period. The first six on both lists were the same and in the same order. And three more were the same, but in a different order. I was surprised that the country of origin of our Facebook audience correlates so well to our general site visitors. This is something worth looking at, and trying to determine other correlations between site visitors and engagement on social platforms.

When looking at the list itself, the United States is first, followed by the UK and Canada. This is expected, as they are both English speaking countries. But to see India as fourth on both lists was a surprise. There has been nothing in the site activity (comments, social shares, emails) that shows we have a large audience in India. Because this information is correlated on the two lists, it makes a stronger case for its veracity. This is something we will track further, to determine what we can do to better serve this audience. If you are reading this post, and you are from one of the countries outside of the US listed below, please leave a comment and let us know how we can help you achieve success in your B2B social media efforts.

Below are the top 10 lists from each source. This simple dive into these two sources of data yielded some surprises in our audience. Do you have your own sources of data that you don’t normally look into that can provide information about your target audience?

Country of Visitors from Google Analytics (2/1/12-4/23/12)
1. United States of America
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. India
5. Germany
6. Netherlands
7. Australia
8. France
9. Belgium
10. Singapore

Facebook Reach (2/1/12-4/23/12)
1. United States of America
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. India
5. Germany
6. Netherlands
7. Japan
8. France
9. Belgium
10. Australia

Photo credit: Flickr

Source: Social Media B2B