Social Media & Consumer’s Expectations

Friday, 04. 24. 2009  –  Category: Enversa Companies

It is true that consumers will come to expect the more traditional media to implement strategies that involve social media. Social media is often referred to as user-generated content (UCG), and is becoming increasingly prevalent on the web. There are thousands of sites that depend on consumers to generate content. This social media is extremely important in today’s society for several reasons:

1. Relevance- Social media can be more relevant than traditional types of media to the consumer because the content is being generated on the spot and is timely to the consumer. There is no long winded process to publish social media online compared to print publications. Instead, people can easily publish their thoughts at given moment. For example, Twitter.com offers short bursts of thought provided by anyone who opens an account, and provides the opportunity to share their thoughts with anyone in the world. This type of social networking software has even been ahead of traditional media at breaking certain news stories and keeping consumers in the know quicker than news outlets can. Furthermore, people are relying on social media for their information. It is becoming increasingly less common for people to read traditional paper newspapers. There have even recently been many newspapers who have decided to provide content to users ONLY via the internet, as opposed to providing them with paper copies as well.

2. Marketing Opportunities- Consumers spend more time on the internet than any other medium. This fact alone makes social media an important concept for marketers to consider. That is, millions upon millions of people have access to real-time information that can be designed, developed, and edited on a whim. Traditional forms of marketing need to be reassessed, simply because traditional marketing strategies will not reach as many people as web marketing nor can they be changed or updated as quickly. Social media, like product reviews on websites, are becoming a standard process for many people when choosing any major purchase. People will often refrain from buying something until they’ve read what others have said about the product. This gives brands a huge leverage to include social media as part of a web marketing strategy.

3. Networking Opportunities- Social media has become THE way for people to communicate. Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow for people to generate content on the fly, and for people to instantly publish that content. People do not have to know HTML anymore. They can communicate with the world simply by updating their Facebook status.

Social media is an extremely powerful form of media because of the relevance, marketing opportunities, and networking opportunities that it provides. User-generated content is becoming increasingly prevalent and will soon be the primary way that people share information.

Marc Pickren is the President of Enversa- a performance-based marketing agency.

Tags: marketing, networking, social media