How Social Media Impacts Consumer Behavior

Why would a business owner look to social media for brand recognition? Isn’t it for you to post pictures for your friends and family to like or share? Well that is one aspect of social media. Just as easy as it is for you to gain followers and likes, it can be used for businesses to gain brand recognition.

Now, let’s assume you’ve gotten the brand recognition you were looking for, what happens next? Social media has now been directly tied with consumer behavior. Cool, right? Take a look at how it impacts your consumer’s behavior.

Charlotte’s Web

With Social media, communication between companies and consumers is no longer top down. In fact, communication is now being looked at more as a spiderweb. Everyone is 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.

Keep Your Consumers Posted

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.

Friendly Influence

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? Contact us at inMark Media and we can go from there!

source https://inmarkmg.com/uncategorized/social-media-and-consumer-behavior-2/