Page 36 - AVN May 2018

BUSINESS | TECH NEWS
#SOCIALSTUDIES
Hashtags help consumers find what you have to offer
PLEASURE ZONE | By Allison Travers
S
ocial media is not going away. In fact, it’s still growing. In
2017, there were 1.96 billion social media users worldwide.
This number is expected to grow to 2.5 billion in 2018. Of
those who participate on social media, eight out of ten people
regularly use social media and 59 percent of those users
access their accounts almost every day. In fact, over one-third
of people check their accounts over five times a day. The
networking sites where these active users spend most of their
time: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
The reality is, people want to engage digitally. They regularly document their
lives online and share with those they enjoy most.
More importantly, 64 percent of consumers are more likely to trust a brand that
interacts positively with consumers online. In fact, 72 percent of consumers trust
online reviews as much as personal recommendations from real people. Some 68
percent of consumers intentionally go to social networking sites to read product
reviews. Consequently, 90 percent of consumers say that positive online reviews
influence their buying decisions.
Not only is social media not going away, your customers are digitally engaged
even if you are not.
Meanwhile, pleasure products are a $15 billion industry. There are hundreds
of manufacturers and distributors, and thousands of retailers around the world.
As the ability for consumers to create and share content in these online forums
grows, so does the need for the pleasure products industry to participate in social
networking. If we expect continued mainstream success and growth to happen
within the pleasure products industry in the years and decades to come, it’s
imperative for our businesses to utilize social media to join those discussions.
Conversations about our businesses and the products and services we offer are
happening with or without us. If we aren’t a part of the conversation, we lose
control of the narrative.
One way for our industry to collectively regain control as well as assert our
collective experience and authority on these topics is through the use of hashtags.
Hashtags are pound signs with a word or phrase (with no spaces) that hyperlink
to any other content that also included that specific hashtag.
Hashtags are the World Wide Web’s digital equivalent of a card catalog at
your local library. It’s how content creators can label and file their content so
the end users can access that content quickly and easily. Hashtags are widely
used to search for content within social networks and search engines, which
means hashtags give you a greater opportunity to get your information in front of
potential customers without paying a single cent.
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If you aren’t using hashtags, you are missing the opportunity for your content to
be found by those seeking the very products you sell and the services you offer.
Each company will naturally use their own branded hashtags, like
#ForeverEldorado or #ElevateU, to make their marketing campaigns searchable,
and then there are hashtags to spotlight events, contests and even specific product
names. Still, it’s the regular and consistent use of the most common and likely
searched terms—like #AdultToys, #Lingerie or #PartySupplies—that should
become standard social media practice to include any time a pleasure product is
posted on social media. This would effectively create a vast and valuable online
database of industry-related content, one that was built with the knowledge
and experience of this industry rather than left to the will and whim of the end
consumer.
CONSUMERS ARE MORE LIKELY
TO TRUST A BRAND THAT
INTERACTS POSITIVELY WITH
CONSUMERS ONLINE. IN FACT,
72 PERCENT OF CONSUMERS
TRUST ONLINE REVIEWS AS
MUCH AS PERSONAL
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM
REAL PEOPLE.
Everyone in this industry talks about the need to mainstream our products and
services. We obviously want to participate in the broader conversations happening,
but that requires we first participate in the communities where our customers
spend their time and then use the available tools to make it easier for them to find
and have those conversations with us. We have the power and the presence to be
the authority on pleasure; we just have to wield that power one hashtag and one
product post at a time.
This article by Allison Travers, Eldorado Trading’s director of marketing communications,
originally appeared in the adult distributor’s monthly newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter,
email marketing@eldorado.net.