Facebook poses greatest business impact

Most businesses believe Facebook is the social media platform that will have the greatest impact on them and their clients over the next two years.

This was one of the key findings of the ITWeb-Deloitte Social Media Survey, which ran online for 14 days and attracted 83 responses.

The survey also discovered that most of the organisations (69.75%) are using social media as a business tool.

Facebook, selected by 86%, is the most popular platform used for business, it also emerged. This was followed by Twitter (76.32%); LinkedIn (60.53%); blogs, YouTube and Google (50% each); instant messaging (45%); MySpace (11.84%); Mxit and Instagram (9.21% each); and Zoopy (5.26%).

The majority of the organisations (34.29%) also believe Facebook is the tool that will have the greatest impact on them and their clients over the next two years. Twitter once again came next, at 22.86%, with LinkedIn sitting at 15.71%, among others.

The survey also discovered that the majority of the organisations (64.47%) use social media for PR and marketing. Nonetheless, 55.26% revealed that they use it for brand building, with 26.32% saying they use it for recruitment. Other uses include innovation (23.68%), learning (22.37%) and CRM (19.74%).

It was also interesting to find that, though the majority of organisations are using social media, most of them (38.16%) never track mentions of their brands in the digital space.

However, 19.74% noted that they check daily, while 14.47% said they track the mentions on a monthly basis, with 10.53% doing so weekly. Some 17.11% make use of automatic alerts.

Asked if their organisations allow social media usage at work, a whopping 72.37% said “yes” with the remainder saying “no”.

It also emerged that most organisations (36.36%) are unsure if they have controls in place to mitigate the risks of social media use. Some 34.55% have such controls, with 29.09% not having.

The majority of the respondents agree that there needs to be a tangible formal measure of their company's social media return on investment. However, most of them (71.62%) do not have a formal measure of their company's social media ROI.

Most of the respondents also either agree or strongly agree that social media is driven through reliable data analytics.

The mobile phone (87.84%) is the popular platform that people use to access social media, the survey found. This was followed by laptops (77.03%), desktop PCs (62.16%), iPads (36.49%) and Android tablets (14.86%), among others.

It was also discovered that most of the respondents (71.43%) access social networks after work. On the other hand, 67.14% access them during work hours, while 57.14% do so on weekends. Some 47.14% noted that they access social media before work, while 41.43% revealed that they have access during tea breaks and lunch at work.

Most (38.57%) also noted that social media influences their company strategy. In the meantime, the majority (68.57%) think data analytics on social media can give them the tools to make informed strategy decisions.

Written by: Admire Moyo Portals Journalist (ITWeb) (011) 807 3294 [email protected]