Interesting Statistics from Nielsen Wire ‘Friends, Following and Feedback: How We’re Using Social Media‘ (September 28, 2011) and ‘How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing‘ (October 14, 2011).
‘How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing’ lays it out pretty straight, as to why it is more important than ever for businesses and service professionals to deliver on their promises. In a nutshell, businesses and service professionals who don’t deliver on promises will be negatively impacted by social media. Whereas, for those who deliver on their promises, there are huge opportunities to flourish.
These excerpts from ‘How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing’ are worth highlighting:
- “Social media plays an important role in how consumers discover, research, and share information about brands and products. In fact 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites. Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and 3 out of 5 create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81% of females vs. 72% of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.”
- “Social Media also plays a key role in protecting brands: 58 percent of social media users say they write product reviews to protect others from bad experiences, and nearly 1 in 4 say they share their negative experiences to “punish companies”. Many customers also use social media to engage with brands on a customer service level, with 42 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds acknowledging that they expect customer support within 12 hours of a complaint.”
Customer service and consistency in products and service has never been more important to the future of your business.
Additional insights can be found in the Social Media Report recently published by Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company.