Social Media & Decision Making

When you think about buying something usually your purchase has been influenced by something. It might be that what your looking at is on SALE or it might be that you saw it being advertised in a commercial, or it might be something you read about that got great ratings, or perhaps a friend told you about it and said it was a “must have”, but somehow you are usually influenced to purchase something because of an outside factor.

Let’s consider when that outside factor is Social Media and how sometimes that forum helps make decisions for us.  Specifically let’s focus on Twitter. Twitter is a medium that a lot of companies and their clients are using to get information about what people think about their brands and products. Twitter is a place to go sometimes to get the help you need in making a decision and not just a purchasing decision but maybe even a hiring decision.  Agencies are using it to find talented people and people are using it to get the dream jobs they have always wanted.  Companies are getting their influence to hire someone from the world of social media and vice versa people are making decisions of where they want to work based on a companies creative approach on Twitter.

Twitter is a medium that gets used in many different ways and some Ad Agencies use it as a forum to send information out about themselves. So the Ad Agency is “Advertising” itself.  Sometimes they do it to find talented people to come work for them, sometimes they do it to “be different” and original, but in reality what they are really doing is using it to inadvertently help people make decisions.

Why would a company want to pick you to work for them when there are tons of other people out there vying for the same job? Well to be honest they are not going to look at you if you don’t show them why YOU are the one that’s special and why they should be picking YOU. Just like a product or a brand we as people & companies need to stand out we need to “Advertise” why we are the “right choice”. 

Let’s go back to the basics for a moment and go over the reasons we buy something:

1.              We need it

2.              We want it

Now let’s break that down even more:

·               Why do we need it?

·               Why do we want it?

Well when we talk about needing something there are many ways to talk about this.  Do we need the item because we can’t live without it, like food, clothing, and shelter. Or do we need the item because it serves a more in depth purpose

In the end it all comes down to making decisions, whether it’s a purchasing decision or a hiring decision, we are all affected by outside factors and those factors help make up our mind for us and help us make decisions. 

Remember that the next time you decide to get that blue blazer your friend was wearing. 

I know I will!