While the return on investment still isn’t clear for many, social networking has been used by 2 in 5 businesses in Ireland to gain new business.
A new survey from workspace solution provider Regus has confirmed what many in the business already know – that social media has become a mainstream business tool in Ireland. According to the Regus survey, 40% of businesses in Ireland have successfully used social networks to win new business.
This robust figure could be attributed to the lower number of respondents in Ireland that doubt the effectiveness of social networking for business. In Ireland, 21% of respondents were sceptical that social networking could ever become an effective customer retention or prospecting tool compared to the 34% global average.
On a sector basis, the ICT, Retail, Media & Marketing and Consultancy sectors had above average use of social networking, while Media & Marketing and ICT sectors companies were more likely to win new customers via social networking compared to other sectors.
Globally, the most popular use of social networks is staying in touch with business (58%). In Ireland this use has less of an impact (48%). The main usefulness of social networks was the possibility of managing and connecting to customer groups for about half of respondents (both globally and in Ireland). 53% also use social networks to find important business information.
The Regus survey asked business leaders whether they believed the channel effective enough to be awarded its own portion of marketing budget. Just over a quarter (26%) of Irish businesses have set aside a proportion of marketing budget for social networking activities and in Ireland, 41% of companies plan to devote a proportion of their marketing budget to social networking activities by the end of this year.
Surprisingly, however, only 22% of respondents had found new employment through social networking, and a smaller than average number of employees at small firms had found new employment through social networking. This result can best be interpreted in light of slower staff turnover in small companies than their larger counterparts. Employees in medium companies were the most likely to have found employment via social networking (25%).