Healthcare marketers have long known the influence that women have when it comes to the consideration, selection and use of health and medical services. They can be your best word-of-mouth advocates, or most harsh critics. It doesn’t take long when browsing through social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, message boards, consumer review sites such as Angie’s List – to produce significant evidence of how women engage in discussions about health topics AND about healthcare providers. The good, the bad and, all too often, the ugly.
A recent study by SheKnows, a women’s media platform and a lifestyle site, provides interesting insights into how women in different age and lifestyle segments use technology and social networks to build their relationships and personal identities. Here’s a quick snapshot of the findings from “Content Producers and Brand Promoters.”
- Women are producing content at record speed and exerting influence over millions of consumers they have never met.
- 56% of women share product recommendations through social media.
- 35% of Millennials recommend products on social media at least once a month and follow, on average, 22 brands.
- 44% are more likely to go to a brand’s social media page to log a customer service issue than to call the company on the phone.
- Women trust content produced by their peers; 63% of women ages 18 to 65 consider a friend on social media far more trustworthy than a blogger, a celebrity, or a website editor.
The online study was conducted by Harris Interactive in July-August with over 1,000 U.S. women ages 18-65 who have consumed digital content. For more insights on women and social media from this study, you can download (with a simple registration) the whitepaper, “Marketing to the ‘Likeable’ Mom: A Report on How Family, Brands, and Technology Influence Her Social Identity” at http://www.sheknows.com/whitepaper. You can also read the full press release on the study at PR Web.
Chief Marketing Officer 