Catalyst S+F: Managing your Brand's Social Campaign. Part 1: Why do Your Customers Use Social Media? - Ryan Huber - MediaBizBloggers

More and more brands are flocking to social media with high hopes of leveraging this new medium to engage users and increase brand recognition Unfortunately most brands donamp8217t fully understand the dynamics behind social media and end up running a campaign that gets mediocre acceptance and fails to meet expectationsTo expand upon this most brands flock to Facebook and Twitter specifically because they see their competitors there While I can appreciate not wanting to be leapfrogged in the market thereamp8217s a lot to take into consideration before initiating a social campaign Over the course of 5 posts this is part 1 I will be diving into the social fundamentals to help you better understand plan implement and measure your next social campaign1 Why do your customers use social media2 Beyond simple posts what capabilities do social platforms provide that can differentiae you from the competition3 Why would your customers want to engage with your brand on a specific social medium and what should you say4 How do you successfully plan out a social media content calendar5 How to measure the success of your social media campaign and what tools should you leverageWhy do your customers use social mediaThe answer to this question can vary from user to user and typical users use social media for multiple reasons not just one By understanding the multiple reasons users interact with various social networks one is able to create a multitier campaign that is relevant to the majority of social users thus driving higher engagement Please note for the sake of this post Iamp8217m focusing purely on personal usage of social media not business usage These two differ greatlySexYes I said it Meeting the opposite sex is probably one of the driving factors for youth adoption of social media After all the initial purpose of Facebook was to take the college experience and put it online But it doesnamp8217t stop at just youth according to a 2008 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project about 1 in 5 adults use Facebook for flirting And just last year MSNBC ran the story amp8220Facebook is divorce lawyersamp8217 new best friendamp8221 where oversharing has contributed a staggering amount of evidence in divorce cases How much you ask Well The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers stated amp822081 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook MySpace Twitter and other social networking sites including YouTube and LinkedIn over the last five yearsamp8221 Now Iamp8217m not advocating using sex to help market your product but it is important to understand the driving force sex has on social mediaNarcissismInitially the Internet was founded on the premise of anonymity Today the lines between real life and online are blurred a useramp8217s online life can easily be a direct extension of their real life Users are feverishly pumping massive amounts of personal data into social media sites This has caused an influx of narcissistic tendenciesCNNTech recently ran an article outlining research from York University in Toronto Canada on the affects Facebook had on narcissism The study found that students that exhibited narcissistic tendencies had amp8220About Me sections that referred to their intelligence and photos that were more about displaying the user39s physical attractiveness than about capturing memories with friendsamp8221 The study expanded further and found that men were more likely to outline their intelligence and wit while women uploaded revealing photos showing off their physical appearancePhotos Memories and RelationshipsFinally weamp8217ve hit a social driver that doesnamp8217t have a negative stigma associated with it The sharing of moments and memories has forever been changed by the introduction of social media Social media users love to interact with rich media so much so that roughly 25 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each month This is no small feat given that Flickr houses a total photo library of over 4 billionWith realtime access to any particular personamp8217s life social media is radically transforming the way people maintain their social relationships Dunbaramp8217s number is amp8220a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationshipsamp8221 These are relationships where amp8220an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other personamp8221 While no precise value has been established for Dunbaramp8217s number most put the number at roughly 150 relationshipsBut this is all changing now the fundamental mechanisms of social media automates this process for us providing the tools necessary to bypass cognitive limits and maintain more relationships then previously possible Two years ago the average number of friends an individual was connected to on social media was 77 Today itamp8217s roughly 130 As Facebook exceeds 600 million users and more people embrace social media we will continue to see this number pushed higher and higherNews Entertainment and TrendsDouble rainbow that cute cat playing the piano Obamaamp8217s inaugural speech amp8211 the discovery of content creation of user generated content and distribution channels for mainstream media have exploded alongside social Users love to share pieces of information they find interesting and entertaining Over 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month web links news stories blog posts notes photo albums etc Roughly 75 of the news we consume online is through shared links via social media and 52 forward news along to friendsFeeling Closer to Celebrities and InfluencersAmericans have always been fond of their celebrities wanting to know more and more about their daily lives Social media has proved to be just the outlet where celebrities and fans can feel closer connected some fans have even been able to connect directly with celebrities via sites like Twitter Some of the top Twitter accounts are owned by celebrities Ashton Kutcher has 62 million Twitter followers Britney Spears has 66 million and Kim Kardashian has 59 million Even President Obama leverages Twitter to reach out to his 63 million followersCelebrity social media profiles have become so powerful that some have asked the FTC to step in and regulate what celebrities are allowed to say Case and point Kim Kardashian makes on average 10000 to tweet about a product or serviceBe sure to checkout my next post where Iamp8217ll dive into different social platform capabilities to help differentiate your social media campaign from the competition

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Catalyst S+F: Managing your Brand's Social Campaign. Part 1: Why do Your Customers Use Social Media? - Ryan Huber - MediaBizBloggers

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