A new study-turned-infographic from Mr Youth suggests that social media interactions influence consumer purchasing tendencies. The data was collected during the three-week period of time leading up to, and including, Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Yet despite glowing percentages about social media users – 65% of users recommendations led to a purchase, and recommendations by social media users were twice as likely to lead to holiday gift purchases – brands apparently are not responding to consumers on social media sites.
A slim 36% of social media users trust brands that have a social media presence more than brands that don’t. Facebook recently began testing private messages for pages, which would give brands the opportunity to actually respond to consumers in a private message rather than a public wall post. Only 55% of brands respond to consumers via Facebook.
Brands respond to consumers via Twitter 61% of the time; in this social media space, brands can either @ message in public or send a private, personalized DM. Although, for some reason brands often times think it’s alright to send spammy, non-personalized DMs when a consumer decides to follow them.
This study was done before Twitter launched brand pages as a part of the new-new Twitter.
The Mr Youth study also did not include the new-ish Google+ pages, which could eventually trump Facebook pages.
