Don’t know if there has been a recent statistical breakdown of Canadian language preferences on Facebook, but last night’s fantastic* & long-awaited Developer Garage event got me into an algebraic mood.
Please play with these numbers & challenge me if you feel this is mingy!
One of our (many) challenges in government communications (oh, hai, I got a new gig…more about that later) is our commitment to French-language services. Some comms branches & agencies, strapped for time & staff, worry that there isn’t an audience for French-language content on social networks. Last night’s #FBTO presentation by Facebook Canada’s Alfredo Tan included some great stats that lead me to believe otherwise:
- 16.9 million Canadians on Facebook (50.1% of ’09 population)
- 54% female users
- 9.5% French (1.6M)
Sooo…if we know that 9.5% of Canadian Facebook users are French-speaking, but we only care about Ontario (at Queen’s Park…not the royal we, okay?) …using StatsCan’s 2006 data (insert joke about non-Dark-Ages-government needing accurate population data here):
Let’s combine all the 289,035 French peeps with thecombo ENG/FR (26,050) & FR/Non-official/+ENG familes (3,065 & 3,405) for a grand total of 321,555 French-ish citizens in Ontario.
If total FR(& EN/Other) population in Canada is 6,777,665 & of those 1.6M are on Facebook – Pepsis have a 24% FB uptake rate.
We can now extrapolate that there are 77,173 Franco-Ontarians on Facebook. A definite worthy audience to plunk some effort & energy towards.
Now, who wants to quiz me on the periodic table of the elements?
* Strongly encourage you to track down the #FBTO presentations by Syncapse (Stella Artois case study) & Vortex Mobile (Boston Pizza in-store promotion w/ FB-integration), both very good presentations that demonstrate the impact a properly planned, fully integrated campaign can have – & what data-rich results it can yield.
Facebook Ads let you target all the French users in Ontario. I believe this is based on a combination of the user’s geo-ip/current location settings and their Facebook interface language preference. The Facebook number is currently 47,200 according to their ad targeting algorithm. You can check it here:
http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/
Thanks so much Colin, I’d love to chat w/ you about getting in touch w/ your contacts at FB since many of our gov’t staffers are firewalled out of the site &/or unable to place/access ad data (i.e. user data) because of procurement challenges. There’s a real wealth of information available to ad-buyers & often this valuable information is only accessible by agencies running ads as part of a broader campaign. Hope to grab a coffee w/ you soon & thanks again for putting on such a consistently great event series
Yeah, not having access to social media sites can hinder the ability to include online elements in communication strategies
Thanks so much for this post Meegs – great info and good thinking behind it. Even if you were off by 30,000, your logic was pure gold. And 47,200 is still a sizeable audience.
Stats Can took the unusual step last year of adding an asterisk to its French language numbers because they were clearly manipulated by a chain email telling francophones to declare they only speak French, thereby artificially increasing demand for French services outside Quebec. Point being virtually all francophones outside QC speak English too. Stone age that, Pinko-bot.
Speaking of stone age, holy crap: did you just say Pepsis? Are you new to Canada? People have lost their jobs over less, some of them still take offense to that, see reply to my comment here: http://blog.hunch.com/?p=29714#comment-103637127
Thanks for the comments Lynn & Neil. & Neil I have a VERY long history w/ the Quebecois. This is a politically-correct-free zone
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