A study called Digital Life searched through over 72,000 people in 60 countries to know better about behaviors of the world’s consumers online.

In order to succeed nowadays, brands have to exist on and offline. The ways we make business are so embed in the digital world that we can’t imagine buying a product without searching about it online beforehand. Opportunities and jeopardy come with it, of course. The fact is, even though these technologies are so immersed in our lives, they are really new and always changing which means they aren’t so well known as sometimes it might seem.

Followed by eggs

57% of people around the world do not want to engage with brands via social media. In US and UK this figure rises to around 60%.  It means that a lot of the money and strategies invested in this kind of publicity can turn into a big waste. A Twitter account that no one follows or engages with has no point to exist or at the very least needs to change its approach.

Many numbers like that were showed in the report carried out between June and September this year by TNS, a custom market research company. They’ve made a map about how people relate to each other through social media and how they use it for buying or talking about brands.

47% of consumers comment about brands online and most of them do it to help or share information. That’s a whole lot of branding. What turns social media so special and different is that it not about only listening but also responding properly. This connection can explore many ways of communicating with the consumers, but, as the research shows, it isn’t going as well as it should.

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The studies revealed that web users in fast-growing markets are more open to learn about brands in social media than people of developed countries. But when it comes to actually buying products, the number decreases all over the world.

With that in mind, a point that companies should be aware of is that a social network is all about people interacting. Think about the viral marketing campaigns that pop-up everywhere: it begins on YouTube or Facebook. The uses of technology to sell have to be creative, playful, helpful, collaborative and interactive. It’s the way to make them attach all the other expressions about the enterprise or product idea and get people to share it because it will be appealing enough that they’ll want to aggregate value to their networks by sharing.