Sharing – is it the new correspondence?

Sharing is a word that has taken on new resonance in recent times with the advent and phenomenal rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Previously, in my house, the concept of sharing was something introduced (without much success) to resolve fights over who’s turn it is to play with Buzz Lightyear! Now there is a whole new meaning to the term.

Sharing online is fast becoming a major part of the marketeers arsenal in an attempt to keep pace with the fast moving digital world, and the opportunities for businesses to use these social platforms to promote their products and services as well as their ethos and personality are expanding with equal rapidity.

The speed and immediacy of online sharing through social media enables marketing messages to be disseminated quickly and effectively (both in terms of cost and time) but also allows those messages to be fluid, changing as needed to match or address current affairs, social events and news. Brands are able to communicate visually, sometimes without the need for any form of written message by aligning themselves with concepts, styles, specific desirable lifestyles and achievements.

This change in the way that businesses communicate with their target audiences is informing changes in the way that advertising and promotion is approached. For example, it might be difficult to see how a bicycle spares company (for illustration purposes!) might use Twitter or Pinterest to promote itself. However, by aligning itself and its posts, tweets and pins with images of healthy lifestyles, attractive people cycle riding in beautiful surroundings, charitable cycle events etc. the brand can adopt and use those postitive visual messages. The target audience buys into those attractive concepts and automatically aligns that business brand with them.

The sheer size and range of the audiences accessible online via these platforms is mind boggling which explains why so many businesses are now realising that social media is not something that they can afford to dismiss. When you consider the infinate connections available from your immediate audience to their friends and contacts, to their friends and contacts and so on it becomes clear that social media offers access to targeted audience volumes previously only matched by television advertising. That old saying about there being just six degrees of separation between each person on the planet has never been so true.

You may have come across sharing buttons on website that you have visited – in fact we have just installed a range on our lovely client Jo Lindsay’s website www.lindsayinteriors.co.uk. Each product page now has the functionality to allow visitors to share that product image and details online through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Once an image has been shared there is really no end to how far it could reach through repins, further sharing, likes and retweets.

So, how do you get involved? It’s not as difficult as you might think and, as ever, we are here to offer our support in whatever way you might need. If you’d like more information or think social media and sharing might be the next step for your business, please just get in touch.