Businesses fail to use social media properly |
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| Sales and Marketing | |
| Written by Catherine Murray | |
| Friday, 10 July 2009 | |
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UK businesses failing to manage online reputation and utilise social media effectively A new survey examining how businesses are utilising social media has found that barely 20 per cent of those questioned have a regularly updated blog and just 37 per cent actively manage their online reputation. This is despite the fact that 91 per cent of those surveyed believe that the perception of their brand online is important to their business, and 66 per cent agree that using tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are good ways to engage with their audience and monitor and manage their reputation online. The survey, which questioned marketing and online professionals from nearly 100 different businesses, was conducted by leading digital marketing agency Quba, and aimed to highlight not only the relatively widespread misunderstanding of these tools, but also which businesses are using them regularly and most importantly - effectively. David Sealey, director at Quba, comments, "There is currently a lot of hype surrounding social media and networking tools, and a feeling that all companies should be using them or risk missing out on some mythical ‘pot of gold’. What marketers need to realise is that social media is not suitable for everyone and will work successfully only as part of the existing marketing mix." "Those that can utilise it successfully will do so in different ways and to a different degree," says Sealy. "Using Twitter as an example, 52 percent of our respondents did not know how to use this medium as a social marketing tool and were therefore unaware of the potential pitfalls." "Companies cannot simply tweet about their latest product and post a link to it, as that, quite simply, is advertising and will be viewed as spam by the very audience organisations are attempting to reach out to," Sealy continues. Sealy advises that a more subtle approach is required with companies immersing themselves into the community and contributing regularly to build up a profile. "This is time consuming and requires foresight, but companies must take the time to do it right or not at all," he says. Other interesting trends thrown up by the survey included the fact that the most commonly used social media for both business and personal use were LinkedIn, blogging and Facebook, while perhaps surprisingly, the much publicised micro blogging site Twitter, was ranked fourth for business and fifth for personal use. 41 per cent of companies also did not know if they had suffered following a negative view expressed online - a statistic which by proxy shows that businesses are failing to utilise social media marketing strategies by reacting to negative comments online and potentially turning them into positives. Sealey concludes, "There is no magic formula for choosing the right social media tool, but like any marketing channel, it’s essential to use the social mediums which the chosen target audience actively participate in." Key results summary
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