ANALYSIS
Understanding the Needs &
Behaviors of Internet Users
Author: Biljana Pesevska Josifoska, Head of Digital Services at McCANN Skopje
Social media remains at the top of the agenda for
many brands. However, it is clear that as a tool for
marketers it’s still very much in its infancy mostly
because of the continuous changes in how users
consume it. Popular measures of success, such as
“Likes”, posts or Tweets, are no more than proxies for other more meaningful brand objectives. In
fact, by definition, setting
these goals suggests you
may have already confined yourself to creating
a one-dimensional social
experience.
Perhaps this is one reason why so many social
media strategies look the
same, using familiar platforms in familiar ways to
achieve similar goals. Do
they make people want to
spend more time with the
brand, do they make them
feel valued as customers, or do they encourage
people to recommend the
brand to others?
Universal Media, our
agency specialized for
media strategic planning and buying, gives the answers in the annual
study Wave that is conducted each year for
8 years in over 65 countries including Macedonia. Over 50,000 respondents included in
the study represent the views, needs and
behaviors of over 1 billion active internet users worldwide. The Wave survey, conducted
in Macedonia by Universal Media Skopje and
McCann Skopje is the only relevant study that
analyzes the active internet users in Macedonia which gives us in-depth knowledge on how
the users’ needs and behaviors are developing over
16
time. This insight is crucial for us to create successful communication strategies for McCann and UM’s
clients.
Wave 8 is just around the corner. This December, we
will unveil the findings from our latest study “The
language of content”. The study not only identifies
the type of content people love, but also shows that
it is at its most powerful when it becomes a valued
social commodity. With Wave 8 we will demonstrate
that the understanding of this power is the key to
create powerful content that motivates people to
share.
Wave reveals a deeply complex environment where
different social experiences meet different marketing objectives. An experience that drives brand advocacy in one category simply creates awareness in
another. An experience that encourages brand participation for one person does very little for someone
else. Knowing the value of an experience means we
can build a social media strategy designed to meet a
marketing objective, rather than starting with how
to exploit an existing social platform.
It’s no longer enough to simply track the latest trends
because much of what we see is background noise or
worse, a complete distraction. What we really need
to do is understand the motivations behind
these trends
and only then
look at when
and how consumers are
doing them.
Emerging Macedonia Fall 2014 Issue 43