the state of social marketing.

Brian Solis wrote a post back in December entitled The State of Social Marketing 2012 that I recently revisited. In it he discusses that even though adoption is slow, consumers are now expecting, even demanding, engagement with brands on social platforms, thus, the rise of the Social Consumer. According to Solis, Social Consumers don’t follow a linear approach through the classic ‘interest to intent’ funnel during their decision making process. Rather, they follow an elliptical pattern where their next steps are inspired by the insights of others, and their experiences are, in turn, fed back into the cycle to inform the decisions of others.

I think we have always been social consumers to a certain extent. Before the advent of social media we would discuss and evaluate potential purchases with our neighbors, family members, at the water cooler...in person. Now we just have more immediate tools at our disposal and a much wider network to draw from.