New research from Canadean Custom Solutions has found that social media recommendations are how more popular than face-to-face recommendations.
The results come from a survey of 2,000 U.K. consumers over the age of 18. Three out of four of the study respondents use social media websites, such as Facebook, to communicate with other people, and 17% have increased the amount of time they spend on social media websites in the last six months.
Overall, consumers don’t just like to share information, they believe it’s very important. 54% of the survey respondents report that it is important to share information online about things that “excite” them, and 30% have done so more regularly in the past six months. The key to increased sharing among U.K. adults is social media, which has become more popular than face-to-face sharing and communications.
Just 29% of respondents to the Canadean survey said that it’s important to spend time interacting with neighbors and people in their communities. That’s significantly lower (nearly half) than the percentage of U.K. adults who believe it’s important to interact on social media sites.
According to a Canadean press release, survey respondents do still interact with and communicate with friends and family in person, but the trend in choosing to interact with people outside your immediate family and circle of close friends via social media first, is one that continues to grow. Canadean Research Manager Michael Hughes explained, “Social media sites allow consumers to interact with like-minded others on specific sites, and in turn begin to follow trusted brand ambassadors for advice and inspiration, even if they have never actually met the person.”
Preferred communications tools and social “venues” are continually evolving, and savvy brands understand that word-of-mouth marketing via social media conversations and sharing is crucial to driving brand awareness, sales, loyalty, and advocacy. Making it easy for people to share information to their social media connections should be a top priority for every brand marketer today. That’s a key piece of the puzzle that is too often missing from social media marketing campaigns. Furthermore, brands need to reward their most vocal brand advocates, which is another piece of the puzzle that is often not factored into social media marketing campaigns at all.
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Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
