Social media is a strategic tool for brands to interact directly with consumers. Forrester’s updated Social Technographics® report provides insights into the different types of consumer-specific social behaviors, the precise platforms where consumers exhibit those behaviors, and when they use social in the customer life cycle. Key findings from the report include that:

  • Consumer/brand interactions have increased across all social media platforms.
    • The percent of US online adults who engage with companies on social networks has grown from 68% in 2015 to 76% in 2016.

  • Consumers’ social savviness is on the rise.
    • The Social Technographics Score for the average US online adult increased from 37 in 2015 to 40 in 2016. This means that more US adults are leveraging social to interact with brands, so companies should adapt accordingly.

  • Consumers still use social most in the explore phase and least in the buy phase.
    • The explore phase, or researching products in order to make purchasing decisions, is the highest subfactor in 2015 and 2016 (rising from 39 to 43 in the past year).
    • While other subfactors have increased, the buy phase has remained essentially the same and the lowest (15 in 2015 to 14 in 2016).

Please contact us if you’re interested in any of the new research from Forrester’s revamped social marketing playbook. For more information, here is a blog post authored by Melissa Parrish, one of the authors of the social marketing playbook.