What is the social disconnect and how can we reconnect

Social media has been around for around 15 years, but this doesn’t mean that we really know how to use its power. People think that if they get a lot of likes and get engagement that they are socially successful. But getting engagement and gathering social data does not necessarily mean that you will get a lot of conversions too. There’s a social disconnect going on as marketers don’t understand the connection between social data and the preference of their customers. Affiliate marketers want to use the social data to demonstrate that they are successful.

The engagement you get on social media does not directly connect to the financial outcome. Presenting how many likes, shares, and comments you got on social media is a sign of desperation in an attempt to say that you are successful but don’t really have much to show. Everyone believes that engagement is the most important metric of success.

But this is not true. Studies have shown that when placing paid ads on Facebook, 90% of sales didn’t come from the people that engaged with the post, but rather from the people that didn’t. This is why the actual conversions and ROI should be the important metrics and not engagement rates.

This doesn’t mean that social data is useless. In fact, it can tell us a lot about our customers and what they like as well as about the products we are trying to sell. This can impact the way we plan our marketing strategies, the way we design or try to sell our products and more. The selling process will be easier, in general, when you know the behavior of your target audience.

The advantages of social insights

• A better understanding of your customers. When you ask people about their preferences in regard to something you can easily find out what they like. This means that you can then change your product according to what they really want. This way you save a lot of money when it comes to product research as well as generate more business and revenue.
• Better products. When you know what your customer needs and you manage to give them that then they are more likely to buy those things.
• Better marketing. If you know that your target audience is very much into let’s say technology, then you can build your marketing strategy around that. This way they will engage more, and they will buy more because they feel like you understand them and that you are on the same page.

How to fix the social disconnect

Stop using social metrics to showcase success. The engagement rates should be something discussed in-house, remain between the marketing team.

When discussing engagement, it should only be brought up if there is clear evidence that it led to sales. Look at everything by leads, not by likes. By email signups not by comments.

The only thing that social data should be used for is to get creative, get better, develop better products, sell things in a better way. Empower those insights, use them to your advantage. Don’t just state that you’re socially amazing when, from a business point of view, you are going nowhere.

It’s better to have 100 likes but 1000 sales than to have 1000 likes and 100 sales or even less. Make sure that you focus on the important things. Use social to get brand recognition and bring your target audience closer. If people like you a lot but don’t really buy anything and are not part of your target audience then you could go without those likes.

For further information, feel free to contact us at contact@bitterstrawberry.com!