While many people enjoy spending time outside during the winter season, making snowmen or cross-country skiing, others feel more comfortable having cozy get-togethers indoors with friends and loved ones. Socializing online, however, is an all-seasons activity – you can do it anytime, anywhere, and it’s more popular than ever. Savvy marketers are targeting these online audiences, with some pretty effective results. This infographic from VoucherBin provides an overview of social media marketing – which platforms are popular, how marketers use them, and whether shoppers pay attention.
Social media is like an enormous, international expo, where consumers can check out promotions, launches, information, reviews, and more. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram in particular have seen a big increase in active members since 2013. Surprisingly, Google+ seems to grab more visitors per month than Facebook does – 1.2 billion versus 809 million.
59% of marketers spend over 6 hours per week using social media. Social media platforms lets marketers engage in a few different marketing activities easily and effectively, including product launches, promotional campaigns, and even recruitment. Facebook is by far the most used platform with 86%; Twitter stands a distant second place at 29%. Event promoters have come to rely heavily on social media, with many of them using the platforms to boost awareness of their event and brand, create new information and customer support channels, increase customer loyalty, and reduce marketing spend. 75% of brand managers have figured out that using pictures is the best way to get their posts the attention that they want.
Are the consumers paying attention? Yes! 46% of shoppers say that they look to social media when making a purchase, with more than 80% of them paying close attention to user-generated reviews and testimonials when considering their options. 58% of consumers actually feel that they should be rewarded for posting positive content about a brand. If customers are checking out your brand’s page, then you need to make sure that you are checking it as well – only 30% of consumers report that they received answers to questions posted on a company’s Facebook page. Ignoring them not only makes you look bad in the eyes of the questioner, but also to everyone else reading your page.
Do you have a social media specialist on your team who is able to respond to customers in a prompt and professional manner? Have you been building a presence on a social media site – or even a few? Do you have any tips for the rest of us? Let me know in the comments.
