The Importance of Social Media

 

     The social media presence is not going away, and now days people are spending more time connected online than ever.  Increasingly our retailers and competitors are making an online presence, and are reaching consumers locally and globally in the millions daily.
    Here are some of the facts for 2012:
(Facebook)

• Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million, and 23% of Facebook's users check their account 5 or more times daily.
• More than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways.
• 80% of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook. 

(Instagram)

• There are 8500 likes and 1000 comments by Instagram users every second.
• As of May 2013, Instagram hit 100 million active monthly users.
• More than 40 million photos are uploaded to Instagram daily.
• 40% of brands have adopted Instagram for marketing, and of the top brands, 20% surveyed had 10,000 or more followers.

(Pinterest)

• American users of Pinterest spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site. 
• Pinterest referrals spend 70% more money than visitors referred from non-social channels.
• 69% of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they've bought or wanted to buy, compared with 40% of Facebook users.
• 25 % of Fortune Global 100 companies have Pinterest accounts.

     More specifically, many of our retailers are using Instagram as an avenue to promote their own business, and at the same time, are defining what brands are cool to their local consumers with their posts.  Accounts like Jack's Surfboards, Spyder, Val Surf, HSS, and Surfside (among numerous more) upload information daily such as sale specials they are running, new product that has arrived, or any other events they may be hosting.  Just among the accounts listed above nearly 14,000 followers are reached, and that's just a handful of retailers in Southern California.  As a brand looking to broaden our reach, diversify our consumer base, and appeal to the trend-setting youth, we need to continually grow and evolve our social media presence, be conscious of how our retailers are promoting our brands through their channels and what is in demand with our followers/consumers.

(All Social Media Data, The Huffington Post. Image Screen Grabs, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.)