Simon Mainwaring

We First provides consulting and training to help companies tell the story of their good work in ways that build their business

November 2, 2012

Why your brand’s survival depends on these 3 new charts

Written By Simon Mainwaring

by

Each year InSites Consulting, SSI and No Problem! in Europe comes out with a fantastic global survey of social media adoption and consumer behavior. The 2012 report came out two weeks ago (full 120-slide report here), and of acute interest is these three charts.

The survival of your business will turn on your ability to tell your brand story and engage customers across social media channels on their smart phones within the next 18 months. Here’s why and the data to back up this claim.

Note that the Unites States lags behind other countries in daily log in to social media yet the penetration is still as high as 68%. Now layer that on top of this the chart below.

Of note is that the average U.S. social media user follows 15.1 brands, sharing the content of 9.4, and engaging in dialogue with 5.7 brands. Then consider the extremely high proportion of smartphone users – 73% – that log in daily to social media.

Taken together, and layering on the fact that smartphone adoption continues to explode while Google reported this year that people are surfing the web more on their smartphones than on their PC’s for the first time ever, these facts reveal how branding, marketing and sales will very quickly become a function of mobile and social technologies. Especially when you consider 53% of global consumers want to be able to make small purchases through their smartphone, and 53% also current use their smartphones to compare prices while shopping according to the InSites report.

These insights, and many more (to read a summary of findings for InSites click here), dial up the urgency to clearly define your brand story, to develop ongoing fluency in social technologies, and to embrace mobile and social customers as partners in your marketing. To do any less is to run the risk of becoming a casualty of technology because you simply won’t have a brand presence in your customers lives.

For the full InSites Consulting report click here, and here is the slideshare link.

Subscribe to We First on Youtube, Facebook, Google+ and connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+