Gray Dudek

One in five online shoppers would follow a brand on a social media site if it meant they were entitled to special deals on items such as groceries, a new report by Evolution Insights has revealed.

It was found that 65 per cent of food shoppers use social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, but would only follow a brand if they were given an incentive.

As a result, brands that use social media sites to promote themselves through ads or money-off deals tend to engage with consumers more, the report suggested.

James Johnson, lead analyst at the market research firm, said: “Special offers and shopper marketing is too often poorly targeted online”.

For online grocery shoppers, it’s more about relevance than aggressive discounting – a common complaint among shoppers is the lack of relevant offers and suggestions online.”

It was also revealed that 75 per cent of online buyers start their shop by going straight to their favourites or by typing keywords into a search engine.

More Brits could start looking online for discount vouchers as inflation has reached a six-month high.

The Office for National Statistics revealed yesterday (December 14th) that inflation reached 3.3 per cent in November due to an increase in food and clothing prices.

(via @IAB)

Ok, quite a taboo topic but there’s a good point to be made here.

With Facebook as we know you can view Profiles, Pages, etc quite easily by clicking and going to them.  Straight forward.

However, to get the new content streamed live into your news feed which you can access on your PDA, etc you have to become a Friend or Fan.

So here’s my point…

The Government are jumping up and down because 12,000 people have signed up to this, let’s call it,  ‘tribute page’ for Raoul Mout saying that they are disgusted with the support he is getting.

Let’s look at this from traditional point of view. When Fred West tortured all those girls and boys and hid them in horrific places did the Government step in and say that everyone who bought the Sun, News of the World, etc on the following weeks were disgusting people and should know better as West was simply a murderer, no.

Now, sure there are a few people who are posting comments that are not quite cricket but in the main there are more Fans/Friends of the Page (not Raoul Moat) than there are contributors.

My guess would be that a number of people are signing up to this page to get the latest (albeit a little tasteless) news from the page to watch what is happening. Sad but true however Red Tops have been selling tasteless trash for years and nobody ever really questions it.

I could be wrong and all 12,000 could be sick individuals we should hunt down and lock-up however I do get the feeling the Government once again is not quite understanding the channel properly and how it is consumed.

Take Nestle as an example, when people were signing up left, right and centre the other month they were not signing up because they ‘loved’ Nestle and wanted to be Friends and Fans in the truest sense of the words, they were signing up to watch the action unfold as    and Nestle argued online. Thus demonstrating my point.

Just because you have a received a ‘Friend’ or ‘Fan’ as Facebook call them don’t be fooled into thinking they are 100% tha because the aforementioned categories are merely naming conventions not indications of intent!

And David Cameron, you’re right it is sick that a few people post pointless crap online but don’t tar everyone with the same brush just because the rest of us are morbidly interested in these idiots…

Hey your campaign team did it all this year and look where that got you!