We have long ago established that presence on social media is not optional, it’s the demand of the current times with most of the netizens spending majority of their time hooked on to social platforms with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube being the most popular networks. You need to be where the target audience is, and they are networking.
This brings us to the debate if networking sites offer revenues to brands. While we may agree on awareness and recall, lets try to evaluate just how you can determine if brands can gain direct revenue through social media. After Google, the biggest referral sites are all social media platforms with Facebook sending 6% of all referral traffic to sites around the world (TechCrunch.Com). This figure may not be astounding but considering the share of Google has declined from nearly 50% to just over 40%, you can easily guess that reliance Google search results is gradually being challenged.
The pace at which social networks’ referrals to brand websites is increasing, it is but obvious that the prediction of about half of all sales being driven by social media by 2015 may just be accurate.
So, what should you be focusing on the rest of the year? At the expense of making it sound simpler than it really is, focus on the social element of social media. The brands, as of today, are so focused on their own social media space that they forget that the majority of their audience may never join their official social space. The need of the hour is to unshackle yourself from the obsession of a huge fan base or followers and rely on the seemingly uncontrollable social sphere outside your directly controlled space.
In a recent article published by SocialMediaToday.com, there was a reference to Zappos.com utilizing social media to its fullest by entering into the public zone outside their own influence. The study revealed that Zappos gave people the option of “sharing” their online purchase on Facebook and each “share” generated additional sales worth $2.08. Each share on Twitter realized $33.66 of additional sales! What is important to note here is that Zappos spent absolutely nothing on this additional revenue and just banked on the “social” nature of its customers to share what they purchased. Imagine adding a little incentive like a minimal discount on the current purchase just to “share” and you have all you customers turning into potential PR agents!
To drive traffic and conversions, you need your consumers to vouch for you. People do not trust Ads, people trust each other. Thousands of dollars worth of Ad spend may not drive as much revenue as few of your customers recommending your product to their peers. So, in the year 2013, when it comes to social media, focus more on what seems quite obvious, being social.
