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Mr Youth has created an infographic suggesting that social media based interactions can influence a consumer’s decision to purchase. We agree. The data used in the study was gathered three weeks prior to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, also including data from those massive purchasing days. Even though 65% of social media users’ recommendations ultimately led to a purchase, and recommendations by other social users were twice as likely to lead to a gift purchase, brands are still failing to respond to consumers on social media sites.
Facebook has recently started testing private messaging for pages, something that brands could clearly benefit from, choosing to respond to consumers directly via private message and avoiding a public wall post. At present, only 55% of brands respond to consumers through Facebook. This is a bad figure considering that 36% of social media users trust brands that have a presence on social media more than brands that don’t.
Is there a barrier for brands on Facebook to engage with their customers? After all, brands on Twitter respond 61% of the time. This is done through an @reply in public or through a private, personalized DM. There’s clearly the potential for spam with the introduction of private messaging for pages on Facebook, as we have seen on Twitter through direct messaging. Still, maybe we’ll see an option that when a user Likes a Facebook page they can also opt in for direct, private contact.
One thing to remember here, the study was compile before Twitter launched their new brand pages with new-new Twitter. The study also doesn’t include Google+ pages, which have the potential to give Facebook pages a run for their money.
What do you think? Do you support the idea of brands being able to reach out to you through private message on Facebook?
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