Does UK business have a social media attitude?
I am a little fed up with the hyperbole about social media, many of the facts and figures that people throw around are just not relevant to the UK businesses that I work with social media marketing projects.
Take for instance the Socialnomics video on You-Tube which famously told us that “if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world” Ok but if email use was a country or mobile phone ownership was a country? Come on what does that mean? To be fair there is some good stuff in the video but the statistics relate to American usage of social media 80% of UK businesses are not using LinkedIn as their main recruitment tool!
So what do we tell UK business people whom I assume are still mostly at the early stages of adoption (or are they?) we need interesting accurate and usable information that can guide strategy and investment decisions.
I have discovered that I am not alone in wanting to shed some light on the state of social media marketing in business in the UK which is just as well as I realised I was going to need some help. I had previously found a couple of UK surveys one of which suggested 86% of UK businesses used Twitter but that didn’t sound right to me. For clarity I asked how the survey was distributed and you guessed it 100% on Twitter – not the most scientific of distribution methodologies!
Sometimes when you want a job done you actually are better to do it yourself so I have designed my own survey using Survey Gizmo and distributed it through several channels, first of all Scottish Telecoms company Commsworld distributed it to the attendee list of their Flexible Working Practices seminars that I was speaking at, secondly the CBI put it out to their mailing list for the CBI Business Summit that I was also addressing and I distributed it in a limited way through Twitter, on LinkedIn and now this through this blog. Subscribers to The Drum magazine will also get the link to the survey by email.
What’s in it for you?
Well first of all everyone who fills in the survey will get a summary of the results by email (don’t forget to give us your email). Secondly all completed surveys will be offered a free three month subscription to The Drum magazine which will be mailed to you biweekly. Thirdly when we repeat the survey in 2011 you will be notified and you will be able to see the shift in attitudes in UK business.
And finally – if you can get to the New Media Breakfast club on July 30th in Glasgow or August 12th in Edinburgh I will be using the results as part of my talk on how to increase sales and profit through social media marketing.
OK so what do you need to do?
It takes about 7 to 10 minutes to fill out the survey and just a few seconds to Re-Tweet this blog or email out the link to some of your contacts. So give us 10 minutes of your time to fill it out and pass it on.
Oh and join the conversation by commenting on this blog especially if you have any suggestions to improve the survey or distribute it more widely or just want to share your opinion on the state of social media marketing in the UK – we want to hear from you.
Here is the link – http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/281378/Intelligise-Social-Media-Marketing-Attitudes-Survey Go on you know you want to!
Thanks in advance
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp