WAVE 5 Social Media Research released

The missing piece to the puzzle of social media engagement has been found in Universal McCann’s Wave 5 research entitled “The Socialisation of Brands”. To help brands create successful social media programmes the understanding of usage, behaviour, influence and motivation of social media users is demonstrated.

To coin the phrase “the world is becoming a smaller place” is aptly demonstrated in the research which shows that over 50% of the active South African internet universe claims to have joined a brand community.

Says Laiza Zikalala, General Manager at UM, “South Africa is one of the few countries that have in essence skipped the deskbound internet era, and are moving swiftly into the mobile era of social media on the go.” Marketers understand the need of interaction between brands and consumers, but why does a person tweet, follow or update a status?

The social media tracker has retained the same methodology between Wave 1 and Wave 5, enabling accurate comparison and trending of the data sets. The sample has however increased to a robust 37 600 internet users in 54 countries and takes into account the various social platforms of blogs, video sites, instant messengers and social networks.

“There is huge demand for more social and interactive relationships with brands,” says Laiza. “Social networks are becoming powerful hubs of interconnected communities but it is not just people that are connecting in the social media space, brands are embracing these platforms in a big way.”