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Companies using social media in Yorkshire – the latest statistics
In November a good friend of mine Charlotte Britton, conducted a survey with businesses in Yorkshire to find out how companies in the region were utilising social media marketing.
One of the most interesting statistics I noticed was that 75% said social media had been responsible for creating positive PR
about the company and 40% saying social media had helped mitigate PR problems. Those are quite bold statements but here are some of the other interesting headline statistics:- 82% of respondents said they used LinkedIn to promote their business with 67%
saying there key individuals were using LinkedIn to promote their business. 47% of
respondents said they updated their LinkedIn profile weekly. - 82% of respondent said they used Twitter a part of their business (to find
customers, new business etc) with 57% respondents saying they updated their
Twitter account daily. - 75% of respondents said they used a blog as part of their business strategy with 40%
saying they updated their blog weekly. - 50% of respondents are using YouTube as part of their business strategy with 30%
saying they were unsure how often the company updates the account. - An astounding 37% said they felt social media has been responsible for saving
money in support or customer relations, with 25% saying that they felt it had
certainly contributed towards it. - 57% respondents said social media had been responsible for or contributing towards
creating new business and sales.
Personally, I think these percentage numbers are quite high and I think that’s probably because the people that completed the survey were already advocates of of social channels, as the survey was pushed on twitter, blogs and Facebook. I should point out that some businesses were also contacted through email. However, when I speak to local business people I tend to find people are using Linked-in to promote themselves or their companies, so I think that statistic is probably pretty accurate. I also think many companies are trying to keep the costs down by doing things themselves but there is a lot to be said for doing things correctly. For instance if best practice is not being followed properly, or a channel or blog is missing a certain plug-in or widget, the company could be missing a trick to getting the maximum search benefits from their content creation. In other words their content won’t be working for them as much as it could be.
Overall, I find these results very positive. Social media now has a big role to play in our region but it’s not the be all and end all, it’s just one part of a marketing mix. Traditional media relations, advertising and eMarketing all still have significant roles to play.
You can download the full survey results from Charlotte’s presentation which is here on Slideshare..
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- 82% of respondents said they used LinkedIn to promote their business with 67%
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Charlotte Britton
December 7th
Thanks Chris for the post. Absolutely agree that it was self selecting as I promoted it online and didn’t send any via snail mail. However I do think this does reflect the trend in the market that SME’s are leading the way in businesses uses social media as a core part of their online marketing mix. They also seem to be very specific about the metrics of success which is why they feel that they are getting ROI.