Digital Influences
In this blog entry I will be summarizing and addressing the blog post “Digital Influence: Blogs Beat Social Networks for Driving Purchases”. This blog was written by Lenna Garibian. The blog is surrounded around the fact that; blogs are more influential than social networks in persuading a consumers purchase decisions. According to Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report.
So where are the brands advertising?
Even with this fact; more brands are investing in social media than blogs. Facebook being the number one. According to the 2013 Digital Influence Report, consumes ranked blogs being the third most influential digital recourse. This decision was only behind retail stores and brand sites. Facebook followed close behind with 30.8% of consumers versus 31.1% for blogs.
Wh
y do consumers follow brands on social media?
The blog covers how consumers follow brands differently depending on the social media network. For example: Facebook users “like” a brands page to learn about the product, keep up with the activities of a brand, and for contests. Twitter users mainly follow brand pages to keep up with brand activities, with learning about the product ranked not as important. Youtube users follow brands mainly to learn about the product and services, along with Pinterest who also mainly follow brands to learn as well.
Another interesting fact is that a larger number of consumers claim that smaller communities have more influence on their buying decision than the larger ones.
Three quarters of the big brand budgets is going towards digital. Including; display advertising, search and video content.
Digital Influencers
Although, these facts are quite different when you are looking at digital influencers. When surveyed it was found that 8 out of 10 digital influencers have posted a blog
before, 88% of them being their own choice. For most, blogging is actually their primary way of distributing content. For digital influencers, Facebook and Twitter are their most prominent social media platforms.
Surprisingly, influences do not first look at the amount of “likes” or “followers” to determine their own success but actually look at their page views to determine this. With Facebook likes following next, then twitter likes, then user comments or either Facebook or their blogs.
