Sine Qua Non

Twitter

Follow us on Twitter »

Tech companies set to increase Social Media spend in 2011

Business | Technology

Tech companies are increasingly turning to social media as a powerful communications tool according to a recent PR report.

The Social Media and Online PR survey, as documented by industry publication PR Week this week, suggests that 83% of in-house PROs expect an increase in social media spend in 2011 with companies looking to harness the power of social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to bolster their PR and Communications campaigns.

Dell’s social media manager Kerry Bridge was quoted in PR Week saying: “At Dell, we are moving from a central social media team towards it being embedded into people’s roles across the board. We’ve trained more than 1000 employees globally and we will continue to roll that out”

Activating accounts is one thing but whether or not tech companies are making the correct use of social media is something different altogether. It does not suffice to open a Facebook or Twitter account, post a few comments and expect a flood of followers or fans. The key to making these communications platforms work for any brand, tech or otherwise, is in the word “social”.

Wildfire’s research document “Putting the ‘Social’ Back into Social Media”, issued in August, found that at least 90% of tech companies have a presence on two or more social networking sites but that few of them actually engage with audiences – the underlining principle of social networking. One-way communication is the antithesis of social media yet a staggering 43% of those surveyed by Wildfire had never replied to a Tweet.

Social media is continuously evolving and tech companies need to have their finger on the pulse to get a return on the investment made. Facebook has today launched a new version of its Groups function with founder Mark Zuckerberg making the first steps on the way to what he describes in an interview with Mashable as “solving the biggest problem in social networking”.

The existence of social networking lies in engaging directly with your target audiences, whether friends, family or consumers, and developments like Facebook Groups and LinkedIn forums are an integral part of that process. Rather than blanket canvassing, users will be able to converse and communicate directly with smaller subsets of the wider audience, thus enhancing and making more powerful the dialogues that take place. It all makes for a potent communications platform, one that tech companies especially are not yet fully appreciating.

(CH)

Comment on this Article >

Comments