When I first really became interested in social media, I was working for a marketing and promotions agency as head of their interactive division. This gave our work a particular skew – we were always looking at the performance metrics of our efforts – how could we drive trial, influence people to consider and love our clients’ products – and how do we measure and improve on this over time. And since that time, it has been clear to me that social media really is about promotion – in that industry sense.
And now the GetSatisfaction team have put out an infographic that confirms at least part of this theory – the largest proportion of people surveyed follow brands so they can learn of special offers and deals (36.9% on Facebook and MySpace, 43.5% on Twitter). So if your online strategy doesn’t have a promotional component you’re going to be disappointing much of your audience.