Web users who follow brands on social media sites are more likely to buy from them than before they became fans of these firms, according to a new study.
The survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research found that 51 per cent of fans of Pages on Facebook and 67 per cent of brand followers on Twitter say they are more prone to making purchases from the companies they track.
Six in ten Facebook fans and almost eight in ten Twitter followers also state that they are more likely to recommend specific brands to their friends.
More info about the survey can be found here.
For those of you who lead or own a business, this is pretty compelling evidence of the importance of engaging people in social media, don’t you think?
For those of you leading churches and ministries, how does this translate to ministry? I think just as people identify more with companies they engage with in social media, they also identify more with their church and other ministries if they’re engaged with them through social media.
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Interesting outcome.
My experience of Twitter and companies is that I have had to use it to get them to respond to me. Unfortunately after getting ignored for far too long by two specific companies I tweeted and @included them in a public berating.
Funny how their PR machines then kicked in. Anyone for a free t-shirt?
Ignored in what way? Sounds like they were listening and pretty responsive via Twitter. That's a good thing, right?
Not naming names because once I've done my 'telling off' I don't want to continue to drag them down but the basics were this:
I was introduced to a company via twitter that offered to do a free site survey for wireless.
I was contacted by email and told their UK country manager would contact me. I immediately replied and thanked the person and CC'd the UK chap in asking him to touch base. Two months later and nothing so I emailed the supplied UK contact. Nothing. Tried again and got a "sorry been busy – can you tell me some more" response.
Clearly laid out what was required and how small we were and that I'd understand if they didn't want to do it. Got a reply to that saying 'more than happy to do will contact next week to organise date". A month goes by and four emails from me get no response. I even re-included the initial American responder and still na-da.
Eventually fed up to the back teeth of hearing nothing I tweeted along the lines of "Is it just me or does everyone get ignored by @name_of_company".
Amazingly their PR machine kicked in – head of Customer Service contacted me and we exchanged several emails and I was sent a "care package" (t-shirt, keyring type of thing). Funnily enough the UK chap emailed me next day but am not impressed by this person. He did come and survey but commented as he did it "I'm supposed to do this with my laptop but my iPhone gives us an idea". Three months later and I'm still waiting for the promised quote.
Guess what we won't be buying.
That stinks. For what it's worth, it sounds like Twitter is the only thing they do well. It's how you first heard of them and how they managed to smooth things over with you for a little while. Too bad the rest of the company operations are not as responsive.