04 Nov Understand Social Sharing & Understand Social Media Marketing
Around 2007 and 2008, I remember social media marketers harping that the most important thing for a brand to do in the social space was listen and respond to consumers. As we come closer to 2011, I can’t help but feel that the most important thing for brands moving forward is to activate social sharing. In order to do this, marketers must move from slapping “Share This” and “Like” buttons on everything to understanding exactly how and why their specific target audience is currently sharing.
To help shed some light, I wanted to share data from eMarketer from a recent study from Chadwick Martin Baily that does a great job breaking down how content is currently being shared. Below I’ll cover the insights and implications this data may have for social media marketers.
Insight 1: Sharing is happening on Facebook, but Email is still important
We all know Facebook is becoming the network of choice, but it is also worth noting that across all ages it is becoming a preferred vehicle for sharing. However, it is still behind email in most demographics. As you can see in the the chart below, the majority of 18-44 year olds would rather share on Facebook than share on their phone or through Twitter. However, even though 76% of 18-24 year olds noted that they share content through Facebook, 70% also reported sharing via email. What does this tell a social media marketer? Email efforts seem to be a great cross-promotional tool to kick off social campaigns, in just about every target audience. It also shows that you may also get some referring traffic from email, just from users finding your content and sharing with their networks.
Insight 2: Boring brands still have a chance
The next chart uncovers some of the most popular motivations behind sharing itself. This is extremely important for social media marketers to understand, because social efforts should be designed with these motivations in mind. As you will see, the majority of sharing is driven by two things: (a) what a particular person finds interesting and (b) information a person thinks will be helpful to their friends. Therefore, if your brand isn’t very interesting or entertaining, it may be helpful to instead try to create social efforts that are more helpful to your target audience and their network.
Insight 3: Older audiences consider recipients more before sharing
Of those who reported they share because they think it will be helpful to recipients, we see that with age comes an increased consideration for whether content can be perceived as “helpful”. This could be a byproduct of the “Like” button and younger audiences now “like” higher volumes of content than their older counterparts, or it could be simply the me-centric mentality of youth. Either way, it could suggest that social media marketing to younger audiences should center around creating interesting, entertaining content, and marketing towards older audiences should be tailored to appear useful or helpful. It also suggests that marketers should spend time considering their audience and the specific call to action they are using to entice their demographic to share.
Insight 4: Content that is socially relevant is most shared
Finally, understanding what type of content audiences are more likely to share is also a valuable insight for social media marketers. The chart below shows a breakdown of the overall content that audiences are somewhat or very likely to share.
What is particularly interesting from the chart above is how important and influential social relevance is in determining whether a piece of content is likely to be shared. Quite simply: the marketers who can figure out how to involve, showcase, or create content designed around a close network of family or friends seems to have a larger opportunity to leverage a network of sharing than content that is simply informative or educational. With 80% reportedly likely to share family pictures/videos, and only 40% willing to share educational videos – you can quickly see that tailoring a campaign to include or involve a user’s network could be twice as successful as one that does not.
What are your thoughts on this data? What insights on social sharing do you feel are most helpful for marketers to understand? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
