As brands continue to leverage the power of social media to connect with their audience, understanding social media analytics has become more critical than ever. Social media analytics provide valuable insights into how your content is performing, what resonates with your audience, and how you can improve your content strategy moving forward. By analyzing social media data, brands can make data-driven decisions, create better content, and achieve greater success on social media. Firstly, understanding social media analytics helps brands identify what content is resonating with their audience. By analyzing metrics such as engagement rate, reach, and impressions, brands can determine which content is performing well and generating interest among their audience. They can identify the types of posts, topics, or formats that are getting the most likes, comments, shares, and clicks. This information provides valuable insights into what resonates with their audience, and brands can use this
In 2009, Erich Joachimsthaler coined a term — Social Currency. He defined it as the extent to which people share brands or information about brands as a part of their everyday social lives.
In today’s “definition” of the term according to Wikipedia, it’s the actual and potential resource from presence in social networks and communities, including both digital and offline.
It is in essence, an action made by a company or stance of being, to which consumers feel a sense of value when associating with your brand, while the humanization of your brand generates loyalty and “word-of-mouth” vitality for the organization.
So now that we’ve covered the origins and the modern definition of Social Currency, what does it actually mean to you and for your brand?
In its simplest of terms, Social Currency can be described as giving your audience “one upmanship” over their friends, relatives or social media followers.
Think about that for a minute. When you have something better, more expensive or incredibly exclusive, what’s the first thing you do? You jump on social media to brag about it to your friends and followers.
Of course, when you do that, you’re almost always going to be mentioning that brand, it’s products or services you have that they don’t. Meaning you just became an evangelist for that brand on your social media.
For FREE to that brand.
Mentioning them creates word-of-mouth marketing to your inner circle. And you know what? That’s EXACTLY what brands want from you.
Why would they want to spend more money on Facebook Ads when all they have to do is provide you with an exclusive deal, product or service and have you brag about it (and them) to your friends on social media?
The answer is — They wouldn’t.
You may think this sounds far fetched, but again, just think about the last time you went to your favorite restaurant and received a free appetizer or got your oil changed at a new place that gave you five dollars off for referring a friend to their business.
In turn you thought you “got over” on someone, maybe a friend or even the business, or you are some sort of exclusive customer now of said brand. When actually, all you did was help them market their brand to your friends and social media followers.
This all comes back to the term that Joachimsthaler coined in 2009 — Social Currency.