Businesses look to social media to drive growth

Published on Sunday 25 December 2011 23:59

social media is expected to be a huge growth area for business next year, with almost nine in ten businesses saying they will be investing more in the phenomenon.

Among companies with a turnover of at least £25 million, 87 per cent said they saw it as a cost-effective communications tool with more than a third (39 per cent) saying it improved their commercial or reputational standing.

The research, by Royal Bank of Scotland Corporate & Institutional Banking, also shows that senior executives are making wider use of tablet computers with nearly half (47 per cent) using tablets regularly. John Dixon, head of technology, media and telecoms from Royal Bank of Scotland CIB, said: “UK businesses clearly understand the importance of social media.

“It is an effective and cost-effective tool, and its increased popularity comes at a time of increased pressures on marketing. The challenge is for firms to maximise their investments beyond 2012.”

A quarter (25 per cent) of firms increasing social media spend said that it resulted in a positive impact on the brand. However, not all firms have a clear social media strategy. Some 39 per cent of firms looking to increase spend in this area say they are doing so to simply keep up with industry trends and/or competitor activity.

Of the 13 per cent looking to cut social media spending next year, more than half (54 per cent) said this was because of budget restrictions while 27 per cent saw no return on investment.

TERRY MURDEN

Related Articles

• Watt demands tax incentives to make UK plc more competitive

  Business lobby group leader David Watt has demanded that the Chancellor does more to cut taxes to make Britain more competitive.

  1 Comments

Comments

There are 2 comments to this article

Order by:

• Newest first
• |
• Oldest first

Page 1 of 1

• 1
• Show all

2

Neil of Edinburghershire

Saturday, December 31, 2011 at 10:57 AM

Having a communications plan ( the word strategy is grossly over used) that has a budget, an objective and a method of evaluation against incremental sales directly attributed to Social Media would scare most professional SM Twitter types silly as the real value to the majority of businesses would be exposed as a great waste of time and money. There will be great winners from Facebook and Twitter, mainly the SM agencies and PR types broadcasting to barely existent audiences through this ephemeral medium where self-proclaimed gurus abound.

• Report Unsuitable

1

thesocialmediacafe

Monday, December 26, 2011 at 08:46 AM

The main reason businesses don't see a return or a reason for doing social media is they do not understand the fundamentals of how it works or set out a strategy of what they want it to achieve. It is therefore impossible to measure a return if you had no milestones in place to measure what has and has not worked. This method marketing is not going to go away so the sooner big companies learn how to harness the power and engage with their target audience the better for them.

• Report Unsuitable

Order by:

• Newest first
• |
• Oldest first

Page 1 of 1

• 1
• Show all

Logged in as:

Comment here. Start typing your comment here:

Post comment

Please adhere to our Community guidelines

Your view

Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.