Look, I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I do spend approximately most of my life on social media. I’m one of those millennials. I’m always on my phone, I have a Twitter account that nobody follows, and old people are constantly yelling at me to get off their lawns.
But I’m not just here to tell you what I know about social media from all my years of hashtagging, Instagramming, and sending gifs to people during arguments instead of just using my words. I’m also here to explain why social media is an important part of experiential marketing, and I’m going to back it up with FACTS and LOGIC from GSMI’s Social Media Strategies Summit, which we attended in April. Here’s what we gathered:
The insight: social media allows brands to remain relevant to consumers, participate in the conversation, build awareness, and engage with customers.
Translation: brands need to speak the same language as their consumers, even if that means saying things are on fleek.
The insight: content has become modern marketing’s fuel.
Translation: every teenager with a smartphone is a reporter now. In the olden days of yesteryear, we found out about stuff by reading the paper and watching the news, like primitive animals. Nowadays, we check in to social media. We see what’s trending on Twitter. We scroll through the subreddit /r/worldnews. Businesses would be wise to get on board, too.
The insight: 75% of consumers don’t believe companies tell the truth in advertising. *
Translation: people nowadays are wise to ploys. They know when they’re being marketed to, and they don’t like it.
The insight: 80% of buyers prefer learning about a brand through content rather than advertising. *
Translation: people don’t want the information beamed directly at their brains from a lifeless TV infomercial. They want to hear about a product from someone who loved it, and then look into it for themselves.
The insight: basically, social media is the new world order.
Translation: it’s Twitter’s world, and we’re just living in it.
* These stats also courtesy of Enjoy Life Foods. Thanks for your numbers, guys.