Sharing Online is the new Word of Mouth...Only Better

Sharing Online is the new Word of Mouth...Only Better

The goal of marketing is to market your salon to your key demographic and to reach as many potential and existing clients of that demographic as possible. In the past, this was done by mass marketing on the radio, newspaper, or television, which costed us far too much money and was in no way targeted.. it was blanket marketing where we sent out our message and hoped the people who we most wanted to hear our message, happened to hear it...

We then figured out, the best way to get the most bang for our buck and to find our target market was via referral or word of mouth marketing... bingo...cost effective and the message usually reached the demographic we hoped to reach...still a problem though... how to get that word out to as many potential and existing clients of that demographic as possible...

Well that is where Sharing comes into play... with social media we are now able to share things we like or find interesting with others with the click of a button... and the old saying, "birds of a feather, flock together" remains true, which means we are also reaching our target market if those interested in our salons & spas are sharing our content.

AddThis, is a company that specializes in sharing and bookmarking content has now been around for 5 years and they have collected and shared some interesting data based on people's social behaviour when it comes to sharing content. The below findings are based solely on sites using the AddThis software, however the service reaches 1.2 billion users, so it is definitely a relevant sample of data!

When do people share?

Peak Hour : 9:30 am Eastern every day

Peak Day: Wednesdays are the peak days for sharing

When do people click?

75% of clicks occur within the first day of a share

Most users click 2 minutes after content is shared

Over the last year, What Sites have seen the largest increase in Sharing from AddThis:

Facebook Send 756%

Tumblr 532%

Google +1 418%

PingFM 272%

LinkedIn 243%

Over the last year, these sites are Trending Down for Sharing from AddThis

iGoogle -68%

AOL Lifestream -63%

MySpace -53%

Delicious -46%

Digg -46%

However, the most fascinating stat AddThis has shared:

Most sharing happens via copy & paste method, ie, sharing by copying url’s directly from the address bar and pasting into emails, instant messages, and other social channels can be up to 10x more than from sharing tools.

So in the end... if your salon is producing quality content on your website or facebook page, allow & encourage your clients and potential clients to share the content... in whatever way they like... this will maximize your marketing & demographic reach.

Until next time.

Cheers.

Chris.