The meaning of Likes

The article was based on research by ExactTarget a online marketing company featuring COtweet a company enabling companies to engage in proactive marketing and response-oriented customer service activities both active in western markets mostly. The article is really interesting and like is here is well compared with life itself because of the complexities they share. In the article a attempt has been made to know what is the consumers thinks when they use the like button, what kind of engagement or involvement they want to have with the thing they are liking and how marketers should take it. Can marketers take it as permission or just a approval to be connected. The first phase was to understand meaning of like; the like mostly signifies making connections, for consumers it was a familiar exercise but for companies it came with a lot of complexities as they would need to judge the purpose of a like to deliver what the consumer wants. Earlier when it used to be a button become a fan people used to take it as a serious decision to associate themselves or not because that depended on loyalty, affinity and devotion which has become a less significant self endorsement activity. This has support of the data which says a total of 42% of facebook users only agree to consider it as fan others are either indecisive or disagree. This button has one hand has increased the connections on the other hand reducing value and depth of the relation on the basis of what a individual user and their context of use. Most of the facebook users and a large part of US online population is engaged in some kind of like behaviour every month either on facebook or on other sites and in that they less frequent with company and their pages. As 74% of the users use it for friends posts and the 52% of them use it on either on company post (44%) or pages (45%). Meaning of likes change with the context like for friends its casual, for companies its to gain exclusivity and on other sites its a way of bookmarking. The 42% of the people like at least one company page a month this explains that they do it on the basis of context of their search in a period. There is the variation in liking of companies on age basis; the most younger and older users tend not to like company pages and the users between 25- 64 years are more likely to like at least 10 company pages whereas the the users of age between 25-44 years like more than 11 company pages. This tells one thing that likes are more when people have more aspiration, information carve and social wants and that is more in the age group of 25 to 60 an is less in younger and older users than that. There is a catch, the one who likes your page has some reasons for that and the companies should know what they want in return. Another data says most of the people like company pages for exclusivity of offers and information either or for discounts and promotion. But the most frequent likers are the one who want share information and build relation. Another data here says that expectation for return varies with age; here what is perceived from available data is expectations increase with increase in age while the self expression goes to opportunities for updates and savings to have something valuable and relevant out of likes. The people liking the companies mostly want exclusivity and offers in return, few people do it to share information and very less people want interaction and their information being accessed, this means companies have very few to have long term relation with them on the page.

Now came the biggest question that can marketers consider like as permission most of the person who like company pages want dialogue, discussions and timely updates only but no marketing messages as they use facebook for increase their social reach. Even if we go demographically (age) no of people who do not want their information accessed increases with age and 56% dont even want the public information to be accessed. Like has a limited scope and marketers have to find the individual scope of likers in which they can interfere. Most of the facebook users like companies sometimes on going to their pages, other majority doesnt likes the page even after visiting them leaving very few people who like the company but quite casually. There is a large chunk of users who dont like the posting by the companies; a second big group does it sometimes and few do it often, Same is for the people who do on the other sites. NASA used image of the day tab to increase the connections at eve of final shuttle mission for which the attention in public was itself gaining momentum through this approach NASA increased interactions, impressions and users. This is all because they identified the opportunity in last space mission to increase connections. When attempt was made to know the reasons for not liking companies pages and the reason that got most mentioned was bombardment of marketing messages and giving access to profile informations, then followed displeasure of sharing company newsfeeds to friends and also they dont want to be contacted through facebook, others simply dont find reasons or benefit to like companies on facebook. This is the clear in indication that users want is dialogue and to be heard individually not to be sent marketing messages because this is a platform where u can have one to one talk and yet everyone can see you.There are 73% people who are protective in relation to their information as they fear how information will be used and large number of people is reluctant to share information as they think it will be like imposing their view on their friends even if they like the company. Now finally we can have some suggestions for marketers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Keep your Promises and deliver up to expectations. Be in touch but do not over pour. Reward fans accordingly. Use likes for dialogue. Keep updated and informations light and less. Dont take like as permission.

Then arises a question should companies offer incentives to likers, the answer would be yes the must be an incentive in way of appreciation but never in monetary terms because that would not bring loyalty into relation as required for long term. So now we can conclude with a understanding of like as 1. 2. 3. 4. Form of self expression Delivery vehicle for exclusive content Remains ambiguous Must be light hearted

Some practical implementation of the study could be 1. Companies should try to know expectation from a like by nature of the user on various bases like age, gender and social status. 2. The companies have to make strategies for each kind of expectation 3. The marketers must try to bring exclusive contents 4. This will help in better targeting and pitching to likers through page 5. They have to map out a plan for the content they will share, including valuable initial content. 6. Creating understanding based dialogue. 7. The marketers need to understand this is not a place for marketing or selling but for creating closer ties. 8. The marketers will have to give interactive reasons and have to create incentives to connect 9. The companies will have to give response to users comments to satisfy him 10. The companies need to make their page in such a way to give a branded experience to even visitors 11. The companies will have to display the benefits and value of liking the page on facebook in a light manner to users