Nearly half buy at least sometimes from brand connections on social media
As many brands have spent the past several years engaging with customers and prospects on social networking sites, marketers have a good idea of what gets web users to connect. Typically, social networkers say they make “friends” with or follow a brand’s posts to find out about special offers and deals, and current research is consistent with that reasoning.
Research has also been fairly steady on why consumers sometimes choose to un-friend brands. Engagement advertising firm SocialVibe found in October that one-third of US internet users who had ended a social connection with a brand did so because the company simply posted too many updates.
Update overload is subjective; it can be difficult for brands to gauge how often is too often, and each social fan may have a different idea of what an appropriate amount of contact is. Many web users told SocialVibe that they checked for brand updates on social media fairly frequently: 17% said they did so every day, while another 23% did so at least once a week. Marketers can be confident that a steady stream of updates is appreciated by many users, but flooding social timelines with posts remains a danger.
It seems most marketers find a good balance, as SocialVibe’s survey indicated relatively little un-friending among web users. Though around two in five internet users ended their connections with brands at least “sometimes,” slightly more reported doing so only “rarely” and about a quarter said they never did.
Brands that don’t overload users and instead help foster a steady connection can reap many benefits, including potentially higher customer lifetime values. About one in five respondents to the SocialVibe survey said they often made a purchase because of a social media connection with brands, and another 27% did so at least sometimes.
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