Social Media and Consumer Behavior

Social Media is not merely for posting pictures for your friends and family to like or share. As mentioned time and time again, Social Media can garner serious brand recognition for business owners when harnessed correctly. However, in addition to brand recognition, social media has now been shown to impact consumer behavior.

With Social media, communication between companies and consumers is no longer top down. In fact, communication is now being look at more as a web. Everyone can be connected. Not only are consumers and companies connected, but connections can also be company to company or even consumer to consumer. So, when consumers are scouting out your product or service, they will likely go to other consumers to receive their opinion or experience they’ve had. While word of mouth has always been a factor in consumer behavior, Social Media has amplified it by connecting people from all areas. A good review can push a consumer to use your product or service, and a bad one can be detrimental.

In addition to changing and improving the way companies and consumers communicate, social media also keeps consumers in the know about important information, new product releases or services, events, hours of operation, and more. If a consumer can get information through social media with one company versus another, they are more likely to use the first company because of convenience. Even if the first company offers products or services that have higher rates than their competitors, having consistent and strong online presence can persuade consumers.

Lastly, a big way social media can impact consumers is by turning their wants into their needs. According to numerous studies, around 75% of consumers who have seen a friend on social media share a product or link will visit the product’s page or website. Additionally, of those consumers, 53% of them will end up purchasing the product that they are visiting the page for.

What’s important to know about Social Media is that it can have several functions. Because of this, it is easy to become overwhelmed with all of the different things you can do with it. The best thing to do is set a goal in mind that focuses on one function. It is better to be committed to one thing rather than simply participating in multiple functions. If you want to impact sounder behavior the way we have described, consider stepping up your social media game. Don’t know where to start? Call or email us so we can get your social media presence up!

source https://inmarkmg.com/uncategorized/social-media-and-consumer-behavior/