How to put the ‘social’ back into ‘social media’

While 90% of technology companies have a presence on two or more social networks, a significant majority are just not being social, reveals a new whitepaper.

Twitter is the most popular network used by technology brands with 74% tweeting.

Twitter is followed by – crazily enough – Linkedin (72%) and then Facebook (20%).

Less than half (48%) have a blog!

This is baffling to us as technology brands are at the top of the ‘cool’ list at the moment thanks to the likes of Apple and Google. 

The study, from Wildfire PR confirms many technology brands view social media as an opportunity to push out marketing messages and corporate content with 60% of companies with a Facebook page using it purely as a distribution channel.

More than half (57%) of companies with a Twitter account used it solely for one-way marketing activity; and only 25% of blogs received comments on a regular basis.

Where’s the engagement?

Social media should be a strategy, not purely a presence. Many brands tend to fall short when it comes to social media simply because their customers can’t figure out why the brand is there. It’s that age old rule, if you’ve got nothing to shout about, shut up. 

Debby Penton, managing director at Wildfire, said, “Social media marketing is not some black art requiring vast experience or knowledge. After all, the vast majority of us use social networks on a regular basis to chat with friends or network with colleagues. It is therefore surprising to find that so many technology companies are trying to force old marketing techniques onto the way they use social media. They are using it to simply ‘push’ marketing or corporate messages.

“To be truly effective, social media requires a different mindset entirely to traditional ‘push marketing’ and our research demonstrates that brands haven’t factored this into their thinking when using social media. With correct foresight and planning, social media can be a wonderfully effective and cost efficient way of developing relationships with end users and achieving bottom line returns.”

Epic fail?

A large proportion of technology companies in the study are ignoring feedback from their audiences. While 66% of Facebook pages received comments from users, 75% of these companies failed to reply to the comments.

Only 3% of the tweets in the study were retweets and just 12% were replies. Shockingly, 43% of brands with a Twitter account had never replied to a tweet. A tiny 9% of companies replied to comments on their blog.

 Putting the ‘social’ back into social media’ can be downloaded by clicking here.