Some 55% of Irish SMEs view their social media performance as average or poor, while 37% plan to increase social media investment in the next 12 months according to a survey carried out by Mindshare on behalf of Bord Gáis Energy.
The survey also reveals 75% of SMEs don’t actually measure their performance on social media platforms while 17% still don’t have a company website. The survey’s participants also said that consumer engagement was the most important use of social media and that 45% of them manage their social media output themselves. In addition, some 37% said that they intend to invest more in social media over the next twelve months.
The survey was commissioned as part of Bord Gais Eireann’s sponsorship of the forthcoming social media awards, The Sockies, which take place next week in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre.
According to Damien Mulley, founder of the Bord Gáis Energy Social Media Awards, “While it’s still the wild, wild west for some on social media, this survey shows that the marshals have arrived in town to bring order. Your boss is probably following you on Twitter under that generic account name and watching what you’re saying about the company. So, my advice is, behave on social media as you do in person.
Eoin Ó Súilleabháin, digital & social media manager with Bord Gáis Energy adds: “It’s encouraging to see that so many small-medium businesses in Ireland are now managing their social media in-house and that they are using social media as a customer engagement channel. And while businesses are allocating a significant percentage of available spend to advertising online, there is still a long way to go as almost half of SMEs surveyed don’t integrate social media with their main websites and over half again don’t measure or only sporadically measure their social media performance.”
