14/11/2011

By Scott Thompson

Facebook usage amongst UK tech outfits companies is soaring, but only 31 per cent use it to engage.

According to a report from tech PR agency, EML Wildfire, despite a huge increase in the number of tech companies using social channels, just 31 per cent of brands with a Facebook account used it to engage with users and, of those that used Twitter, 14 per cent of tweets were replies and retweets. When it came to the companies that had a blog, 20 per cent received comments and only one company took the trouble to reply to comments received.

The results of the annual study, which analyses the social media activity of the 2010 Deloitte Fast Tech 50, are revealed in a report entitled ‘How social are you?’. The use of Facebook amongst B2B companies has skyrocketed in the last 12 months, with 70 per cent on the platform compared to just 40 per cent previously. Overall, Linkedin was still the most popular network used (92 per cent), followed by Twitter (80 per cent). YouTube remained the least popular for the second year running (44 per cent). Despite the increase in adoption, most companies were still only using these channels for ‘push’ marketing techniques with 65 per cent of companies with a Facebook page using it for one way communications and 96 per cent of blogs simply broadcasting article and news content without inviting responses.

Debby Penton, director at EML Wildfire, says: “The vast majority of businesses we speak to now accept that social media is something they should be doing. But we are still seeing confusion about how to approach these new channels and get the best out of them. It is therefore no surprise to see even some of the UK’s most successful tech businesses still struggling to adjust and approaching the situation with ‘old media’ mindsets. Social media gives companies a unique opportunity to reach their audience directly. But without the right strategy in place and the skills required to execute, brands could actually risk damaging their online reputation rather than harnessing the positive commercial impact that social media should and can deliver.”

Companies covered in the study include Autonomy, Geo Networks, Innovise and Moneybookers. It can be downloaded at: http://www.emlwildfire.com/tech_social_media

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