One of the main goals in content marketing is to produce posts that get liked and shared, so that they can reach as wide an audience as possible. That’s why brands are trying harder and harder to understand what makes users share content.
According to a recent survey by video search website Blinkx, young people are more likely to look for information on social media than on other channels, such as search engines. The results show that 43% of users aged between 18 and 24 cite social networking sites as their preferred source of content.
Suranga Chandratillake, founder and chief strategy officer of Blinkx, commented that social searching may be a popular feature for young users but, across the entire panel, only 19% of respondents opted for it over search engines. Looking at older users, those aged over 55, searching for content on social platforms was popular among only 5%.
The survey also revealed that many brands have started to take advantage of the interest in finding content through social media, converting their feeds into sources of quality information that people can discover and then pass forward by sharing. One of these brands is clothing retailer Cotswold Outdoor, which uses its social media pages to share links to videos that its target audience might enjoy, both produced by the company and originating from other sites.
James Dunford, online marketing manager at Cotswold Outdoor, said that there was so much interesting content out there and the company cannot refuse to share something just because it was not made by them. If users like it, sharing it is worth it because providing good service to customers is what counts, he added.
Young consumers turn to social sites for information
