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Social media marketing continues to be a challenge for businesses around Australia as many fail to grasp success and engagement in this fast moving and challenging arena.

In the first of a sequel of articles to be revealed on BRW, Branding Expert Mark Ritson suggests that social media is being over represented and over sold to our nation’s executives referencing Coles and Woolworths to demonstrate his thought provoking point.

With an average click-through rate for a branded Twitter page sitting at approximately 0.5 per cent, Ritson explains that even one of Australia’s biggest retail brands like Coles, which has 4,600 followers on Twitter, will only have around 23 people actually opening its next tweet!

While Facebook has a bigger reach than Twitter, Ritson again suggests that we look a little closer as he states that Woolworths (who has around 489,000 likes on Facebook) is actually represented by less than four per cent of the 13 million people who shopped at their stores last week.

So what now, you say? Here are some key takes outs from the BRW article to consider and reflect upon:

  • Brands must consider engagement rates rather than ‘likes’
  • Australians use Facebook to interact with each other, not listen to brands talk about themselves
  • It’s called social media for a reason and if you want people to interact with your brand the key is to be social!
  • Despite a large audience reach there is often little engagement on social media with actual brands

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