This is a weird one, and maybe not necessarily taken as gospel, but checkit: IBM Smarter Commerce, which tracks sales for 500 of the top retail sites reports that “social media made up less than 1 percent of online traffic and sales on Black Friday ... down from last year.”
To clarify: This means that fewer than one percent of people who purchased an item on Black Friday (a record setting sales year, mind you) clicked through onto a retail site from a social media link.
According to Business Insider, this doesn’t actually bother most retailers because they use platforms like Twitter, etc. to raise brand awareness more than anything.
So, it’s quite possible social media is great for planting the seeds in the minds of your customers, fans, whomever. But using it for calls to action? Not so much. Then again, what do you expect from someone who is willingly calling themselves your follower? It’s not like Twitter calls them “disciples.”
They can opt in and opt out whenever they want. It’s not like they’re invested on any greater level than that.
You’re spreading the word. Which isn’t bad — but it’s perhaps unreasonable to expect more from it than that.
David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. When not playing video games for work he's thinking of dashing out to Chicago Diner, Pizano's, or Yummy Yummy. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.
