Survey: People respond to brand offers when they come from friends

According to a new survey from Performics, 40 percent of people who use a social media site at least once a day prefer to interact with people online rather than in person. About half use phones and email less frequently because of social media.

“I don’t think it’s that people are becoming anti-social, per se,” says Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, a performance marketing agency. “The tools have really enabled them to just be wired differently, in how they view the world and how they think about things.”

Many of the 2,000 or so respondents have social media expectations of people they know. About 41 percent said they expect people in their social circles to respond to Facebook posts within an hour.

What does that mean for communicators? It means friends and family are still people’s key touch points on social media. One-third of survey respondents said they’re more likely to respond to posts from brands if a friend reposted it, rather than if it just came up in a feed. (Of note: People are more likely to interact on a brand’s fan page than if they see a post in their feeds.)