Here’s an odd statistic in the world of internet marketing.

The Skittles website attracted 23,000 U.S. unique visitors in March 2012. That’s a decent number for a major brand product. However, what is notable is that the Skittles Facebook Page attracted 320,000 visitors–14 times as many! And that’s not a normal result: major companies don’t usually have more traffic to their social media venues than to their standard website, let alone at such an unbalanced ratio. How does Skittles do it? Are Facebook brand pages the wave of the future, making standard websites irrelevant and redudant?

Here are 26 social media secrets which set Skittles apart from other major brand sites, courtesy of Rob Petersen of biznology:

• 1 out of every 5 minutes people spend online are spent on social networks in 2012; up from 1 out of every 20 minutes in 2007
• People spend more time social networking on Facebook than doing anything on sites owned by Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, the Web’s three most heavily-trafficked properties
• 14.6% of Internet users’ time is captured by Facebook compared to a combined 2% for all other social networking sites
• 423 minutes are spent each month by Facebook users social networking
• 47% of people are “somewhat likely” to purchase from a brand that they follow or “Like”
• 40% of the time people spend on Facebook is spent on “News Feed”–once you like a brand, their update appear on your “News Feed”
• 80% of US social network users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook
• Facebook Fans are 28% more likely to continue using a brand than users who are non-fans
• Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a brand to their friends than users who are non-fans
• $71.84 is the average additional amount Facebook Fans of a brand spend each year versus non-fans
• 20% to 40% more spending occurs through people who follow a brand through their social networks
• 40% of consumers prefer social log-ins over creating a new/guest account
• 15.2% of all U.S. display ads across the web were socially-enabled, up from 8.2% in November 2011
• 40.9% of CPG Food ads and 26.9% of Grocery ads are socially enabled
• 10X more people “engage” (like, share, comment, post, check-in) with a brand on Facebook than click through on an online display ad
• 31% of traffic to a brand website comes from brand social network sites
• Top 1000 brands on Facebook are able to deliver an actual amplification of 81x if their efforts are maximized
• 90% of online consumers trust recommendations from people they know
• 70% trust unknown users, 27% trust experts
• 14% trust advertising
• 8% trust celebrities
• 75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements
• 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog
• 20% of Twitter updates are either requests for product info, or responses to these requests
• 20% of consumers use social media to get a customer service response
• 21% of social media users are willing to spend more for great customer service versus only 13% for the general population

These stats are sourced from comScore, WOMMA, HubSpot and American Express. These are great companies BarnRaisers is grateful to be associated with and we appreciate the information they make available to help business make smarter decisions.