Uptitude Investigates Social Media and Brand Confidence
At Uptitude we had developed a tool that helps business to FIND, REVEAL and SOLVE issues associated with a wide network of social accounts. Revisor has been successfully implemented in a leading global consumer healthcare business to bring back control of websites & social accounts and protect them from evolving legal risk exposures. In the age of big data, digital marketers can be overwhelmed with results, unable to use them to take action and improve compliance and performance.
In many cases social media is still manually monitored and many opportunities to improve consumer brand confidence are being missed.
“73% of marketers have said that social media is an effective way of gaining a positive rate of return”
Social media has become an integral part of today’s life. People spend 2.5 hours, on average, on various social media platforms (Singh, 2020). The origin of social media can be traced back to the 1960s with the advent of email. However, it was only in the 1990s that social networking sites were introduced, as it was during this time that the internet became available to the public (Edosomwan et al., 2011). Over the years, social media has evolved exponentially. What once started as a medium to connect with family and friends has entered almost all avenues. Social media is no longer used only for personal purposes. On the other hand, businesses have understood the potential of social media, and almost 73% of marketers have said that social media is an effective way of gaining a positive rate of return (Singh, 2020).
Active Users By Social Platform
Today social media platforms offer increasingly growing audience with Facebook having 2.45 billion active users, Instagram - 1 billion, Twitter - 330 million, YouTube - 2 billion, and Snapchat - 360 million. As companies can reach a large number of people through social media, it has become the most powerful marketing tool today (Singh, 2020) which brings with it a lot of audit and oversight to make the most of the opportunities and not leave business open for internal or external audit. Social media has a large influence on the consumer’s buying behaviour. Through social media, consumers can access infinite information about the products they are interested in, any time they want. With the help of internet technology, consumers can buy products after they collect information, check out the ratings and reviews, ask for advice or opinion from the brand community, and make an informed decision (Singh 2020). Hence, it is important for companies to take every opportunity to project their brand in a positive light in front of their audience.
“Customers can influence other consumers’ buying decisions by generating content and peer-to-peer discussions”
Digital marketing through social media has become quite popular in recent years. Apart from introducing and promoting their products, companies also have the opportunity to build brand trust, loyalty, and confidence through their social media pages by interacting with their customers (Maecker, Barrot, and Becker, 2016). Aside from benefitting by interacting directly with customers, companies also gain from discussion amongst customers. Customers can influence other consumers’ buying decisions by generating content and peer-to-peer discussions (Çiçek and Erdogmus, 2012).
The positive influence of social media on brand loyalty and consumer purchasing behaviour has been established by several researchers (Çiçek and Erdogmus, 2012). Moreover, a lot has been said about marketing strategies that companies should use to attract consumers’ attention and build brand confidence (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). At Uptitude we would like to look a little deeper into how features of online social media accounts affect a visitor’s propensity to purchase. We will discuss topics such as the importance of social media verification, the response from brands to customer queries and reviews, accessibility of privacy policy and terms and conditions, etc. on consumers’ propensity to purchase in a series of articles. Every social media platform has a different format and offers users a variety of features. However, there are certain features that are common to almost all of them. It is important for companies to know the important features that would lead to sales and brand confidence and those that may not have any favourable impact. We will analyse how the presence or absence of certain features would affect consumers’ attitudes towards a brand by using the already existing literature on the topic to highlight the importance of data governance and having the correct tools and knowledge on how to keep things right. By reviewing the existing literature on the influence of social media on consumer brand confidence, it can be said that the presence of certain features does have an impact on consumers’ propensity to purchase from a particular brand. A social media brand page is the company’s marketing tool to showcase its products and create a brand image. However, the potential of social media is much higher. With the help of the right tools, like Revizor, it is possible to not only create brand confidence and loyalty but also to maintain them.
Although this literature review has helped to provide some statistical figures about the social media features that enhance brand confidence and the purchasing behaviour patterns of consumers, there are still a lot of gaps that can be filled with more research on this topic.
For more information about how Revizor can support your business monitor its digital assets – email info@uptitude.co.uk
By Yauheniya Tyler, Psychology BSc.
References:
Edosomwan, S.O., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D. and Watson, J. (2011). (PDF) The history of social media and its impact on business.
Singh, R. (2020). Social Media and Consumer buying Behaviour: Issues & Challenges.
Edosomwan, S.O., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D. and Watson, J. (2011). (PDF) The history of social media and its impact on business.
Maecker, O., Barrot, C. and Becker, J.U. (2016). The effect of social media interactions on customer relationship management. Business Research, 9(1), pp.133–155.
Çiçek, M. and Erdogmus, I.E. (2012). (PDF) The Impact of Social Media Marketing on Brand Loyalty.