According to the same study conducted by Sensis in May 2015, it was found that the average Aussie also spends more time per week on Instagram (4.2 hours) than on housework – and we don’t blame them, cute cat photos are much more fun than an evening date with the ironing board and a pile of wrinkly shirts.
Thus, it comes as a surprise that only 31% of Australian businesses have a social media strategy in place.
Research shows that 32% of consumers actually do enjoy following businesses online, whether it be on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. These customers frequently use these mediums as part of their consumer decision-making process – more often than not, they are the first thing the customer looks at apart from the business website. How many times have you chosen Doughnut Shop A over Doughnut Shop B, for example, simply because Doughnut Shop A had a more up-to-date Facebook page as well as an Instagram page filled with rows of better-looking photos?
You may be the best bronze jewellery maker on the Gold Coast. You may be the owner of an amazing Malaysian restaurant in Sydney’s eastern suburbs that has been a quiet achiever for more than a decade. You may serve some of Melbourne’s most authentic Neapolitan-style pizzas (if that’s you, please let us know – we at Crackling Media love our pizzas to death!). In other words, you may be an expert in your field but very little people these days will know that you exist if you don’t put yourself out there in the digital mediascape. By not having a well-crafted social media strategy, businesses like yours are incurring opportunity costs. In other words, you could be missing out on reaching untapped target markets and achieving greater brand awareness, all of which may negatively affect income.
Want to know how to best use social media to engage your customers? Shoot us an email enquiry@cracklingmedia.com and we’ll tell you how it can be done!