The Value of Showing Up on Social Media

Filed in MY BEST POSTS, Social Media by Matt McGee on March 29, 2013 5 Comments

local-search-study-3

That’s an old statistic from 2011. You may remember me writing about it before:

63 percent of U.S. consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social networking site.

I mention that stat regularly when I’m speaking at Local U workshops about social media for local businesses. And I always sense that the audience immediately asks the same question that I asked when I first heard it:

Why would just having a presence on a social networking site compel a consumer to choose a business?

We know that there’s not a ton of actual searching on social media sites for local businesses; that still happens primarily on the main search engines. So what are people looking for when they look up a local business on Facebook, Twitter or somewhere else?

As soon as I share this stat with the Local U audience, I explain that my guess is that people are looking for some kind of confirmation — confirmation that the local business exists, that there are social humans behind the business, and that they can be contacted via the social network with any future questions or problems.

And last week, I somehow came across this related tweet:

social-media-trust

Yeah, I know it’s just one tweet and not at all scientific proof of anything. But I also bet there are a lot of consumers that feel the same way. When they’re looking up a small business on a social site, it’s a trust issue.

As Woody Allen famously said, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” I think there’s an application there when it comes to small businesses and social media.

Comments (5)

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  1. So would we be talking about “Social Proof”? – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof

  2. Matt McGee says:

    To a degree it’s a similar concept.

  3. Might be worth the time/effort to round up some MTurkers for a survey on the topic to get a refreshed statistic.

  4. It factors in very close to the sale and after the sale. At least that is how I see it. Maybe the final trust factor that brings in the sale? I try to get clients to at least do one of the main social practices, be it Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever. FB is good if it shows other people like the brand. Your pie chart show that you really really should do it. Social ads a group dynamic to the product that helps people overcome their hesitation to buy.

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