Hey-hey, my amazing virtual audience! :) Hope you are all doing great enjoying you digital selves.
Have not posted anything here for quite some time...I know...in my defense - I was not procrastinating, but making some wonderful scientific discoveries! In other words, I spent few sleepless nights putting together the very last chapter of my dissertation. And you know what? - That was totally worth it! Not only now I am feeling proud and relieved, but I`ve also got some pretty wonderful tipsto share with you.
Just to give you some background information: my reserach was a part of MSc Sociology programme (in case you don't know. Hm...I wonder if my blog is adding anything to promotion of such a great major?). However, the topic I`ve chosen for investigation is very digital-PR-marketing-SNS orientated.
It is all about this neologism coined to describe a phenomenon when people 'Like' and '+1' and 'Share' and show huge online support, but than this all stay Facebook-(or whatever)-declared only. They (and by them I mean journalists and academia people) call it 'slacktvism', 'clicktivism', 'keyboard activism' and so on. If you google the thing, you'll probably find more articles on politics, civic activism, charities and similar contextualisation of the idea. Well, I kind of studied similar dimension in my dissertation, but because I cannot reveal anything specific here (due to University Policy on Ethics and something else), I decided to share some thoughts on the application of my findings for the PR and marketing purposes. In particular, it really is interesting why many people state 'purchase promising' behaviours online (e.g. in a form of 'Like'), but never actually buy, leaving your digital or social media manager sad and almost fired.
To clarify, with the tips provided bellow I hope to give you some answers (or just food for thought) on the issue of:
'I have 135k Twitter followers and have not sold anything to them yet', or 'Facebook picture of our new product got 200k likes and 100 reshares, but only 10 people order it from our shop' and etc.
I know these are very childish-silly kinds of examples, but I hope, you know what I mean. Let's see how slacktivism of SNS users may be transformed into some real sales. I will hope it will be possible to conclude after I explain some possible reasons of the existing gap between 'online intentions' and 'offline actions'.
1. Time is money.
This conclusion may seem quite obvious, but the biggest concern of nowaday lives is time, there is always not enough hours to sleep, not enough minutes to talk and not enough years to make our dreams come true. Many web designers and development companies have already understood this idea and applied to their interfaces, making everything as simply as it can possibly be. Therefore, every business trying to sell products needs to simplify purchasing experience. Online shops was a partial solution to a problem.
On the other hand, if you compare a number of received 'Likes' with your sales statistics, the difference may be explained by the 'instantaneous factor'. The nature of 'Like' or '+1' button suggests its being the easiest way of showing agreement/support/approval/emapthy and many other feelings and emotions (yeah, at this point you might ask where is the 'Unlike' or 'Hate' option). Whilst the process of considering what was 'Liked' takes a while, with a high tendency towards 'not to buy' desicion. My conclusion here is that social media are great for PR and marketing purposes, but it is important to keep in mind their rather entertaining character. Thus, you can and should promote your stuff online, but not put many expectations on the instant sales growth.
In this respect, I think if there was a social network for shopaholics with the initial aim of 'selling and buying' with not just 'Like' but 'Buy' buttons, it would be really successful. People would create their 'shopper profiles' and post 'look what I`ve just bought' statuses. To some extent my point can be proved with the example of Russian social network vk.com where there are thousands of 'VK groups' (communities) where people only promore and sell '100% non fake Ray-Bin glasses from Vietnam'.
Conclusion: the longer it takes for a customer to proceed from initial seeing ('Liking') of your product to actual 'here is my money I want this' phase; the less likely is the chance of completing a purchase.
What to do:
- have online shop - have direct links on you SNS accounts (posts) to the online store;
- if you don't have online store - have your adress and opening hours and all the important information regarding the purchase written AS CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE IN A PLACE WHERE YOUR CUSTOMER SEES IT (not where YOU think it should be)
P.S. Yeah, right, I am talking about how time is expensive these days and made you spent almost 15 valuable minutes reading this extra-long article....Sorry for that. :)
Come back tomorrow and you will have even more shocking impressive fascinating tip based on the findings of my recent research!
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