This week we came across a white paper by Janrain and echo; The Next Generation of Social Innovation. This paper identifies how marketing in social media channels has evolved tremendously over the past several years, and which aspects of online marketing are essential in order to really see the benefits of using online marketing.
The paper goes into great detail about the importance of creating a ‘social experience’ for consumers online, claiming that social experiences have propelled social media to become the most popular form of online activity, accounting for 22.5% of all time spent online. In some cases however, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, brands are allocating media spend and air time to drive users to an experience that they are unable to control or monitor; which is why marketing pundits have said that investing time and money into social media will not be truly viable until it can show a positive Return on Investment (ROI). Therefore, although Facebook and Twitter and other popular social networks are important tools for new customer acquisition, they shouldn’t be confused with a destination for customer retention or maintaining an on-going relationship with a loyal customer base. In order to do this, brands will need to focus on creating integrated real-time technologies; driving user behaviour through their websites, mobile applications, and mobile web and television experiences.
With social media site usage on the increase, traditional online sites have in turn seen a significant decline. The paper claims that the real-time, engaging functionality of social networks is what makes them so addicting, but this is what traditional sites lack. This no longer seems to be the case, with the emergence of new technologies to make websites and mobile apps just as engaging, including aspects such as social login and real-time conversation. Using Interscope Geffen A&M as an interesting case study, who incorporate Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, and every other social media site you can think of into their primary website; the paper identifies exactly what brands should be looking to do in building their own interactive social experience-orientated website. Read the paper here