An interesting case study from Hitwise succinctly illustrates how social networks can serve as a launching pad to mainstream brand awareness. They’ve done this by tracking the rise in popularity of British rock band Lil’ Chris.
Social Networks Launch Brand Awareness
Nobody was talking about Lil’ Chris as late as July 2006. Nobody. By September, awareness had spread via fans at MySpace and Bebo, yanking the band’s Website visits upward like the bucket at the bottom of a well. The climb continued through November, when visits sharply dropped, only to rise sharply again by December.
Like you’d expect from buzzy, fickle social networks (anything become old news after four months there), communities and chat rooms stopped sending traffic last month. At the same time, however, the general public had become more aware of the band, and began searching.
The return upward from search engine visits corresponds with the downward spiral of visits generated from social networks. The early hip crowd hyped the band until they were adopted by the mainstream – that makes the band instantly uncool to the pop culture frontiersman, who’d rather betray their initial instincts than be viewed as wave-riders. (That’s my analysis not Hitwise’s.)
Here’s what Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins had to say about it:
Early on, before the website tipped, social networks (MySpace and Bebo in particular) accounted for 64% of site visitsAs Lil Chris developed a “brand” and consumers were increasingly googling Lil Chris, search engines became a more important source of visits. When Lil Chris was relatively unknown, social networks were a far more important source of visits.
The picture what role social networks play in the marketing cycle is becoming increasingly clearer. Social networks are where seeds are planted. Search engines provide the sunlight.
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