Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media

I just read that headline as the findings of a 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study. (hat tip to WOMMA for pointing to it in today’s newsletter)

Not surprising to me, but the study found that almost 60% of Americans interact with brands through social media channels and 93% feel a company should have a presence in social media. The survey was conducted with 1,092 adults.

I’m glad that someone took the time to do this survey because it points to the important fact that people are eager to interact with the brands they love, are having a problem with or want to get a question answered about. They are fine doing it through the traditional channels, but more and more they want to be able to do it online as well.

Guess what? This does not mean that throwing up a Facebook Fan Page or setting up a Twitter account is going to help you out unless you have a plan and resources to back it up and use these tools properly.

Companies of all sizes must be smart about what they do on the web. Strategically thinking about where they want to do it and more importantly where their customers are currently spending time online and thus makes sense for them to be there.

I’m excited to be working with some companies to do just that. If you need help just drop me a line.

What are your thoughts? Are you interacting with brands online? Would you like to be able to do this more? Let me know your thoughts. I’m curious.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Rambles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • I'm interacting with brands online quite a bit... of course, I'll throw out a brand name on Twitter just to see if they're paying attention from time to time :P

    As I've mentioned in several of my talks: Just like people expect a company to have a web page, we are rapidly getting to the point where people expect companies to be accessible by way of social media. However, the perception of "wow, you're easily accessible to me?" will rapidly turn to "I expect you to be online". That is why it is SO important for companies to get in the game NOW.

    However, I'm VERY surprised to see the aggressive numbers that this study quotes. 93%? Seriously? I wouldn't have expected those numbers expecting social media engagement for another 5 years. I'd expect 93% for "do you expect a company to have a website?" When I tell average people that I've interacted with companies like Samsung online through Twitter, they're amazed. While social media has make big strides in the last year, I simply do not see this as a representative sampling of where things are... yet.

    The survey was done online, but it doesn't say where. I wouldn't be surprised it was done ON a social media site (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) That would explain the numbers.
  • Yeah Ed, I wondered the same thing because the numbers seemed really high to me as well. I also wonder if it was a location thing. Meaning I wonder if they asked across the country of it was just in one area.

    If you did this in a big city like Boston or San Francisco vs a small town somewhere else in the country the results are going to be different.
  • Wow, great info CC. Glad you posted this survey result. SM is a bit further behind in Australia but we are working on speeding up the process. Thx for the heads-up.

    Looking forward to AoC2.
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