The unspoken rules in social marketing unspoken rules

Have you ever thought, why do you go to brush friends circle, Micro Bo? Why do you want to visit Taobao treasure?

There are motives behind all our online actions, especially in social media, where friends and family can greatly influence the way we click, Share and praise. This is also evidenced by a recent study. The findings cover how people interact and respond to each other, spend time online, and make purchase decisions. It is interesting to analyze the result, I believe it is good for you to know the market.

Can you use the tips mentioned in this article to your social marketing strategy? Then read on to see what the research has done.

1. The latent rules of interpersonal communication in social media

Real-life friendships and social media friendships, do they follow the same set of interpersonal rules?

Erin Bryant and Jennifer Marmo, a researcher from Arizona, State State University, did a study on Facebook in 2012 to find answers to the question. The study was aimed at six young people in focus groups who were brainstorming about the rules of interpersonal relationships in social media.

Eventually they came up with 36, and then took the 36 rules to evaluate another 600 Facebook users who were in the 18~52岁, and 13 were validated. See here you may still be confused, what is the rules of interpersonal relationships? See below:

If I respond to this person's message, I expect him to respond.

I can't say any disrespect.

When I publish my own message, I have to think about the negative impact it will have on my relationship with the person who saw the message.

If this person deletes one of his messages, I should not forward it again.

I should contact this person by other means instead of Facebook.

I should present myself positively and honestly to this person.

I can't allow communication with this person on Facebook to get in the way of getting the job done.

If a message is to be objected to by this person, then I should not send it out.

I should use the most basic common sense to communicate with this person.

Before releasing the message, I should consider the negative impact it may have on the person's career trajectory.

I should give this person a birthday wish by other means instead of Facebook.

If I want to mark someone in the picture, I should pay attention to maintain his image.

I shouldn't have dug up too much information on this person's homepage.

(the 14th rule that has unfortunately failed to qualify is: I should be aware of what impact this person will have on me in real life by releasing information about me.) )

One interesting part of the study was that people who asked to participate in the survey judged that the rules would be applied by themselves to close friends, friends, or casual acquaintances. As a result, the difference between close friends and acquaintances is far from our expectation.

Rules related to maintaining relationships (such as a simple "Happy Birthday" on social networks, by reference to rule 11) are most often used in casual acquaintances, which are rarely used by close friends. Bryant explained that social networking sites such as Facebook are just one of the many ways we connect with close friends, but it may be the only way we can reach a nod.

What does this mean to you as a market?

The key point of this study is the importance of mutual benefit. The first rule mentions people expecting a response from others and applying it to social marketing, which means responding to a user's message or comment.

In addition, people will discriminate between different levels of intimacy of friends, this research results also affect our market strategy. Here's a definition of three friends who are close to each other:

Close friends are the kind of people that students will treat as their best friends.

Ordinary friends are the kind of people who hang out online, but don't develop further.

Casual acquaintances are people who have been face-to-face with him but have no day-to-day communication.

For market people, the product home page fans are basically the 3rd category, casual acquaintances. As mentioned above, the rules relating to the maintenance of interpersonal relationships are most commonly used in such people, such as caring for the gradual growth of users in the community, responding to user comments, and forwarding positive messages.

2. Friends keep us in touch all the Times

60% of 18~34岁 's mobile phone holders say they sleep with their phones on their bedside, lest they miss phone calls, text messages or other important messages.

Did you do it too?

In a 2012 survey of mobile phones, the data turned out to be a testament to the dependence on friendships and the frequency with which social media are used. If a friend has something to say, we will be willing to understand it and don't mind the time.

The survey can also be interpreted from another perspective. If we don't see the phone too often at a certain time, there's a stronger desire to open the phone and check the updates on the Friends ' homepage or the message.

39% said they had been complained by friends that they had not returned their messages and phone calls in time.

33% said they had been complained by friends that mobile phones were not frequent enough.

Only 12% said friends said they spent too much time on mobile phones.

We want to be able to keep in touch with our friends at all times, and at the same time we feel the social pressure of contact at all times.

What does this mean to you as a market?

We should be careful to find the best time to post a message, and the best time does not mean it is the peak time for people to play mobile phones. Peel Research Center advises: the above data undoubtedly proves that whenever we post a message on social media, people are online, so it is necessary for us to test all 24 hours and see when it will be best.

If you look at the data we posted on Twitter on the Buffer (a social media management platform), there are a number of peaks that occur during the day and night.

3. How do friends influence your purchasing decisions?

The American Authoritative research journal "Pacific Standard" has made a wonderful summary of an interesting phenomenon, this phenomenon by a number of researchers from Oxford, Harvard, Limoric and other universities, the following will be a brief introduction:

Suppose you hesitate to download one of the two games "Country vacation (FarmVille 2)" and "Candy Smash Legend (Candy Crush Saga)". Would you prefer to listen to recommendations in the online review, or would you trust your friends ' recommendations? Although you think you can make a fair reference to your friends ' opinions, you may be tempted to choose your friends.

The study calls for a purchase record that has been applied on Facebook since 2007. In this study, users faced the impact of two kinds of information on purchasing decisions:

"Accumulation of information", such as the best-selling application list.

"Recent active information", for example, a friend has just installed this application.

In essence, buying this application means you trust your own research or public opinion, or you can play the game with friends. This study shows that the impact of a friend on you is greater than the results of the survey.

The researchers said that the influence of friends could lead to an exponential increase in popularity of apps, which, like apps in the App Store, would snowball in popularity once it was successful. Here's what the researchers explained: people randomly imitate their friends ' behavior and make similar choices they have made recently, so they are most likely to choose the fastest-growing product, regardless of whether their popularity is highest.

What does this mean to you as a market?

Whether you are a dealer or a product, the following suggestions will be of great value to you.

Take the "Social identity rule (Social Proof)" example, and if you want to persuade a user to take action, show him the hundreds of compliments of the product. The testimony of acquaintances is more convincing and the same.

Facebook's use of the rule has been raised to another level, with the click of a button not only on its own website, but also on other sites as Plug-ins. On those websites, you can see which of your best friends have also been praised, which greatly affects your view of the site and increases the likelihood that you will be good.

4. Care > Share

There have been many studies on the influence of social media on friendship, and the conclusions have partial positive effects and negative effects. Here is an interesting study that has led to a significant increase in the number of people in favor of positive influences: direct interaction with people in social media can enhance friendship.

According to Bree McEwan, a professor at the University of West Illinois (Western Illinois University), when we send letters to others, browse his homepage, and love each other's messages, we add value to our friendships and feel more intimate. She surveyed a group of young people's views on some of the moves on Facebook, including messages, comments, etc. on a friend's homepage.

These actions are broadly divided into two categories:

Care--"expressing one's concern for a friend through a message", i.e. replying to someone else's message

Sharing-"The purpose of maintaining relationships through self-expression and disclosure" is to publish the message yourself

Professor McEwan concludes that caring helps strengthen friendships and that sharing can cause people to lose interest gradually. If a person only pays attention to sharing personal information, but does not like to reply others to send the message, can make the relationship worse. And if a person likes to show concern for a friend and respond positively, he will find that social networking provides a convenient way to maintain friendship.

What does this mean to you as a market?

Building good relationships in social media is like building a two-way street.

You must: 1, publish useful and interesting content, 2, respond to your users, keep an eye on them.

If you think of social marketing as an opportunity to build relationships, one-way sharing does not make your company or brand more popular, and care can be done. As Prof McEwan concludes, expressing concern and positive responses in social media can improve the satisfaction of friends.

Conclusion

You may be aware of the impact that friends have on their use of social media, but the impact is so great that you might not realize it. The unspoken rules of communication, the decision to buy, the influence of friends have permeated all aspects. These studies can help marketers to use social media effectively, caring and sharing. Have you started using these tricks?