Our Behavior On Social Media Is Defining Our Brands

June 6, 2017 By Lori Lewis

One way to keep up with everything tech is to spend time each year with Mary Meeker’s annual “Internet Trends” report.

You may already know of Mary – but if not, Mary is a well-respected venture capitalist. She is a partner at the firm, KPCB.

Meeker’s “Internet Trends” gives us an idea of what habits our audience and our advertising partners have developed, along with emerging habits.

While you will find the full 2017 report below, I’ve highlighted 4 slides, and what they mean to us.

Starting with slide 38, great to see something we already know from current experience.

Leveraging user generated content can (often) drive nearly 7x the engagement than an ad created by the brand itself.

As you may recall in past social memos – we’ve started tapping Cumulus on-air talent to create user generated content to extend Westwood One advertising partners’ products.

And when done right, it works really well!

Slide 53 backs the importance of creating a solid social media customer service plan.

It would be good to pay attention to the audiences’ preferred mode of communication.

(As much as we love “caller 10,” in last year’s “Internet Trends,” Meeker pointed out how Millennials and the younger generation, “Z,” had the least interest in using the phone to interact with brands.)

Some brands have gotten better with responding to fans socially. Yet there are still too many people going unacknowledged. And with that – could we be inadvertently creating missed listening occasions?

Here’s why I ask:

The next slide – Slide 54:

While responding via social is just the right thing to do – Twitter designed a research study with Applied Marketing Science to help brands understand the power of acknowledgment.

And it should come as no surprise that customers who receive timely replies are more willing to recommend your station.

One final slide – Slide 166 – displays how the evolution of mobile video consumption has accelerated:

 

Think about this: over 8 Billion video views on Facebook each day, and 10 Billion daily on Snapchat.

Video can oftentimes trigger emotion more profoundly than text-heavy posts. And when we strike just right – that’s when the base goes to work for us. They share our content, increasing awareness.

The audience is generating their own content, creating their own online experience. So it’s critical to pay attention.

When we emulate trends and habits – it helps our brands feel at home (look natural) in News Feeds. And the goal is to resonate, right? Not just to be seen.

This deck has 355 slides. If you’d like to flip through it, here it is.

http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

Lori Lewis is Vice President, Social Media at Cumulus | Westwood One.

You can email her anytime at lori.lewis@cumulus.com.