Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Classifying Consumer Activities

Before you launch a social media marketing campaign, you need a feel for what activities consumers undertake on the social web. After all, your marketing campaign is far more likely to succeed if it is in harmony with what consumers are trying to accomplish on the social web. Consumer activity on the social web is classified into these eight categories:

Information: The Internet, with its academic roots, was conceived as a virtual library and an information-sharing tool. And to this day, consumers use the Internet for finding information more than anything else. In fact, it’s no surprise that Google and Yahoo! are two of the top four web destinations. (Facebook is the second; YouTube is third.) It’s because they’re primary search engines, helping consumers find the information they’re looking for. That hasn’t changed, and even with the Internet going increasingly social, searching and finding information remains the number one consumer activity online. If you’re running a marketing campaign for a product or service that consumers seek, you’re most likely to get strong results. When people are in “information seeker” mode, they’re most apt to participate in campaigns.

News: One primary use for the Internet is news. More people read the news online than ...