The Advantage of Social Engagement for Business, in Simple Words

sasha uritsky

Aug 22, 2014

Much is being said about social networks and their importance for businesses. The amount of analysis, explanations, and advice keeps on growing, while the matter is being investigated from every possible angle, real and imaginary.

As for me, the need for businesses to market and sell on social can be explained by a simple argument.

Here it is.

The principle advantage of social networks for a business over other mediums is in the social networks’ potential to build trust. Traditional marketing mediums, such as TV, newspapers, internet, radio, etc. are not designed to build trust. They are information channels, or scaling vehicles, or sales means, but their primary goal is not to build trust. Social networks, on the other hand, are exactly this - a trust building tools.

And herein lies their biggest advantage in today’s market. The endless variety of options consumers have and the ever growing dissatisfaction with traditional aggressive marketing methods, such as commercials or banners, means that creating trust between businesses and their audiences is now the most efficient way to attract customers. The way that guarantees long-term sustainability and growth.

This is, simply put, the reason for businesses to embrace the social.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

Amazing Social Data for Travel Companies

A huge number of travel related conversations is happening every day on social networks.

Based on nmodes Twitter data (averaged over 1.5 years of observations) there is

- 1 conversation every 15 minutes in which people notify that they are going to NYC;

- 1 conversation every 43 minutes in which people from the USA express intent to go to Europe;

- 1 conversation every 4 minutes with interest or intent to go on vacation;

- 1 conversation every 3 hours in which people are asking for hotel recommendations.

And this is just a tip of the iceberg.

(nmodes currently has 70+ travel-related topics and intents, and growing.)

For travel companies all these are qualified leads, potential customers, and attentive audience.

Reaching out to these potential customers results in a positive consumer experience, brand recognition, and, yes, sales!

Abundance of Information Often is a Liability

A massive change has occurred in the world during the last ten to twenty years. Until recently and throughout the history of mankind information was hard to access. Obtaining and sharing information was either a laborious process or impossible, and the underlying assumption was that information can never be enough.

Today, of course, we have the opposite picture. Not only information is easily available, it keeps pouring in from a growing number of sources, and we continuously find ourselves in situations when there is more information than we want or able to process.

A major task we, as species, are facing is therefore how to reduce or filter out relevant information. It is, to repeat, in direct opposition to the task we’ve been accustomed to during all previous centuries, which was how to obtain information.

Since this change took place only recently, within a lifetime of one generation, we didn’t have time to develop efficient set of procedures to address the new problem. But the work has started and will only accelerate with time.