How social interactions influence future brand intentions

Actions speak louder than clicks

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Recommended link: Starcom MediaVest SMBI Study

Starcom MediaVest reveal how social engagement benefits the brand

I thought it would be useful to share this new research in our alert since unusually it shows what outcomes different types of social media interaction lead to:

The SMBI study essentially measures actions that indicate future involvement with the brand, they did this by monitoring user's social media behaviour and then follow up dialogue with those users.

The Social Media Behavioural Index (SMBI) is the result of a Starcom MediaVest Group study of brand engagement. Working with over 6,000 Twitter, Facebook and YouTube users across 29 brands.

Several sectors were researched, including finance; food and drink, health and beauty; retailers; media and entertainment; and technology & telecommunications.

The study offers several key take-aways

• The most engaging social media action revolves around commenting and sharing content
• The deeper the interaction with social media the greater likelihood of moving the consumer from enquiry to preference
• Twitter carries the most influence in encouraging future brand actions, people tweeting are 89% more likely to consider purchase and 86% likely to prefer the brand
• Video is proven to be the most popular content in social media, with 80% of users likely to take further action, followed by competitions on 68% and games 59% - all three are most useful to deepen existing relationships

Marketing implications of this research

This kind of research is crucial to help bring the importance of social media marketing right to the fore of the marketing mix, it helps brands to prioritise social media when the effects can be measured and then argued for.

The research indicates that seperating the actions between getting people to visit you is one thing, but knowing what's best to encourage people to do next is key. Though we talk about 'engagement' a lot in marketing, and we can accept that more interactions are "good" for the brand, this is the first study that we're aware of that informs what actions will likely influence on purchase decisions.