According to Nielsen, Americans spend 17 percent their time online at social networking sites, an increase of 11 percent from a year ago. For media savvy users, that figure is undoubtedly higher. Most of us take our interactions with social media for granted. I rarely question why I log into Facebook to see friends' status updates. Nor do I ponder why I obsessively collect followers on Twitter. However, as marketers, we must question the why behind social media behaviors to understand how social media can be best used to spread messages, build brands, raise awareness, and influence change. In this post, I'll incorporate social psychology theories to explore why social media has become an important tool in our lives.
One of the most fundamental reasons social media has become important is human nature and history. Human beings are innately social creatures. We require connections with other people for survival, both physically and emotionally. It is only recently in human history that we have changed our living habits so that we are isolated from kin, removed from tribes, and living closer to strangers than to our families. In addition to the limitations posed by distance, Americans today work longer hours with less time to connect with friends and family. But our need to be together, to share the details of our lives with one another, to support each other in the small and inconsequential as much as the big and meaningful, remain despite our newly developed living arrangements.
Social media fills a huge connection gap for many. A status update on Facebook might take thirty seconds to post, while phonecalls to your ten best friends to announce something meaningful could take ten hours, and phonecalls to announce something inconsequential will probably never happen at all. Social media allows us to be with each other in the mundane, and strangely enough, that's where the strength of relationships is built, nurtured and maintained.
So what about your 150 friends or followers who don't count as your inner circle? How many people in your social media rolodex really care that you have a sore throat today, or you ate popcorn for dinner? Or what about the complete strangers following you on Twitter? They are your outer circle and you share history, interests or friends with them. Though just as important as your close friends, the outer circle serves a different purpose. Consider why anyone attends their high school reunion. Most of the people there haven't spoken in more than a decade, yet they are all concerned about impressing everyone else. Why do these people really care what strangers think of them? Quite simply, for acceptance, status, and image management. We have a need for our outer circle to regard us favorably, to be impressed by us, to accept us and aspire to be like us. It's human nature and it's rooted in our fundamental survival strategies to belong to a tribe of people like us. Social media fills that need brilliantly by giving us immediate access to people who are like us in some way. Social media provides us with overlapping tribes of people from different sectors of our lives that we would otherwise have to expend a lot of energy to stay connected with.
My next blog post will discuss the importance of brands in the social media space, and why people are willing to accept marketing via social media channels.
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