Brafton has reported that marketers plan to more carefully monitor social mentions about their brands this year, and a new report from the GlobalWebIndex affirms that this is a wise practice. The company's Annual Report 2011: Welcome to Social Entertainment found that social users are among the most trusted product and service referrers on the global web.
Trust in social network contacts increased by nearly 50 percent in 18 months, with social chatter showing a gain of 47.5 percent as a reliable resource. Simultaneously, the number of internet users who say they are motivated to log on to share an opinion has increased by 13.3 percent.
With this in mind, marketers should be aware that social contacts are valuable potential brand advocates. The study found social usage is shifting from creating content to distributing it, and brands that produce fresh, custom posts or Tweets that act as Like-bait stand to benefit from this trend.
Notably, marketers may find they have the most success in producing shareable content via custom news. Linking to news stories is a top activity among microbloggers (showing a 17 percent increase last year), and this was closely followed by an increased interest in “sharing an opinion on a product/brand.”
In addition to being fuel for positive social feedback, offering quality social content is a competitive necessity. As Brafton has reported, 73 percent of social marketers use custom content to seed social sites.
