Why people use social media
and what that means for brands and marketers
The below findings were recently released by Global Web Index based on a survey of 16–64 year olds in late 2014. It found something that has long been obvious-but-forgotten by marketers: people do not use social media primarily to connect with brands. Or even secondarily… you get the idea.
The point isn’t that brands should abandon social media (“nobody wants us there!”) — we know brands can see huge success across any social network. The point is that brands creating their presence on social media need to know that they have no right to consumers’ attention. They have to earn it.
Making social media work for your business is getting harder and harder: it’s requiring more creativity, a better handle on the technology and platforms and greater discipline than ever. The novelty of consumers being able to talk to a brand — even their favourite ones — has worn off.
Don’t despair though. The GWI study hides some top insights for brands. Here is what I took from it:
Insight 1
Social media is all about people. 55% use it to stay in touch with what friends are doing, 38% use it to share photos and videos with others, 36% use it because their friends are, 32% to meet new people, and so on. So those potential fans you want to engage… remember they are using social media to connect, converse and interact with other human beings. Your content as a brand needs to be human then. Don’t advertise, don’t try and market yourself, communicate like a person [o2 example] and immediately you will find consumers more open to your presence.
Insight 2
The people want to be entertained. 41% of users are on social media to kill spare time, whilst 39% are using it to find funny or entertaining content. There isn’t a brand out there that couldn’t entertain it’s fans on a regular basis, there are simply brands who aren’t brave enough to. The top social brands of the past few years entertain first, and worry about the rest later — just look at Paddy Power, or innocent.
Insight 3
41% of people use social media to stay up to date with news and current events. Make sure you are sharing your company news and current events, and if you can then create news about your brand. If it is relevant, have an opinion on current affairs too — particularly industry relevant news that you know your consumers will be interested in.
Insight 4
The majority of social media activity is, paradoxically, passive. Only 3 of the 10 reasons involve actively posting or sharing content through social networks. The majority of the behaviours people exhibit on social media are passive behaviours — to “stay up to date”, to “find content”. Last year it was found that 44% of Twitter users actually never tweet. And passive behaviour on social media is probably more widespread now than then. What bearing does that have for brands? It increases the value of an engagement because it is so much harder to achieve, it increases the importance of reach and views as measurements of the impact of content.
Insight 5
Social users might be posting and engaging less-and-less, but they remain open to discovery of new people, content and brands when they are online. Unlike messaging apps — or a lot of other single purpose apps — a large part of the attraction of social media to users lies in finding new (and entertaining, as we already know) things. That opens the door for even small brands with great content: if you do social well, you can be found and loved by social users.
Insight 6
Running through all these challenges is the now accepted fact that a brand in 2015 has no choice but to combine a paid strategy with their content marketing. Let’s not shy away from the fact that we know users are not flooding to social media to talk to brands. Don’t be the brand that sticks it’s head in the sand and thinks you’re the exception to this. If you can act on all the above insights, and combine that with even a small media budget though, there is still huge scope for you and your brand to build and engage a community online.
Don’t lose faith. If anything, the fewer social media users there are that just want to engage with brands… the better marketers will have to be to build those relationships. And if it makes the cream rise to the top, that’s never a bad thing.
