After shortly analyzing current trends in the social media setting, this article aims to navigate two main areas that they impact reputation in, respectively the profit and emotional registers. At the end, we’ll be able to observe how these frameworks shape customers’ experiences and take notes on how we can gain the most out of it.

The Context

As customers, we’ve stopped just chatting a long time ago. When online, we’re no longer just lurking, linking or liking. We’re no longer just following, but we’re demanding our rights to (what we believe to be) authentic self­expression and voicing (what we believe to be) our needs.

We’re demanding to be engaged into this animated landscape that shapes our day­by­day realities. On top of that, we’re also looking for more profound informational exchanges.

On the other side of the pond, as entrepreneurs, we’ve stopped just chatting way before our customers did, remember? We never actually lurked or liked or just followed. More than before, we’re now paying attention to group behavior and its influences in our bottom line, so that we could meaningfully increase ROI. Moreover, we’re positively responding to consumers’ tendency to go for what’s convenient, but at the same time actively challenging them to socially and commercially mature.

Putting customers and entrepreneurs together, we get a complete image of the current social media context and realize how it fosters several trends:

• Since clients get to voice specific needs and wants, providers are opting more and more for targeted advertising. As a consequence, measuring dynamic indicators becomes an important focus on the expense of the usual, static ones.
• Consumers are in the business of sharing life online. As much as possible. All of it. This includes spending money. Lately, E­commerce has grown in both volume and intensity.
  Furthermore, this also adds the exact opposite behavior of deeper communication. As mentioned above, we’re not just chatting anymore, but searching for our souls and pouring out our emotions on social platforms.
• We all share an impulse for accessibility which, in terms of an overwhelmingly diverse social media context, translates into network selectivity. It means that we tend to prioritize our second life based on main desires and use networks for their exact purpose.

At a closer, more in­depth look, we can split those drifts into two main categories ­ trends concerning profit and ROI and courses aimed at satisfying personal, emotional drives.

Profitable Reputation Management

Thoroughly analyzing group behavior in the context of an audience demanding to be engaged in conversations and processes makes for an interesting approach to profit and actual bottom line impact.

Social Media stresses on engagement analytics

Presence and involvement shift from having to do with volume to measuring engagement. If we used to pay attention to the number of likes, shares or comments, we now focus on participation rates. Even more, in order to measure long­term trends and performance, we tend to stick to the same platforms, thus increasing relevancy, effectiveness and ROI in a familiar environment.

Social Commerce

Since we’re sharing life on online platforms, it’d be only natural to take commerce up there, as well. Hence, we’re witnessing the monetization of our user base. To reach that end, we are:

• Creating the opportunity for our clientele to acquire products/services directly from social platforms
• Developing apps to foster and enable effortless micropayments
• Coming up with new membership and subscription schemes
• Increasing social platform based crowdfunding campaigns

Samsung stands as an example to support these trends. They have announced the Family Hub fridge through which, either on your own or together with your family, you can grocery shop online. Samsung has associated with MasterCard’s digital wallet so that you could order from FreshDirect or MyWebGrocer. In support of this, the financial services giant has developed a mobile app which allows family members to access or pay for your edibles.

Personal Reputation Management

We’ve got masses with attitude here! Entrepreneurs need to respond to customers’ appetite for coziness by meeting their advanced needs for qualitative informational exchanges with familiar and uncomplicated environments. That answer comes in terms of providing integrative solutions that somehow contain all our clients’ thoughts, emotions or actions. We do that by practicing:

•  An empathetic approach

Wanting to be more effective and comfortable at the same time pushed us towards transferring a major part of our lives online or onto our smartphones. Ergo, the need for intuitive hubs to encourage emotional sharing and socializing which, in turn, would consume even more time in our daily existence. So, for us entrepreneurs, it becomes important to create a product/service story that best fits with the ecosystem of our buyers’ lives.

• Social Network Consolidation

In terms of purpose, users also seem to match their necessities with a specific platform. For instance, blog commenting is losing ground. Splitting platforms by function, people keep reading articles on blogs, but they’re taking the discussions about them to Facebook. Maybe not accidentally, the Facebook messenger is the most used chat app. CNBC states that Facebook collects more active users a month than WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram combined. (Facebook ­ 1.49 billion users; WhatsApp ­ 500 million; Twitter 284 million; Instagram ­ 200 million)

Impact on customer’s experience

Whether analyzing your reputation from a personal perspective or a professional one, you always need a boost. Whether you engage close or from a distance with your audience, you’ll always need a marketing strategy upgrade. Just contact us and let’s make it work together with a little BiT of both!