Social Media

As part of the PR course we are running on behalf of the South Cork Enterprise Board we run a session on the use of Social Media for PR purposes.

As expected we spend some time accessing the different options available but as part of our “experiment” we will first assess what people in the group are using currently and their attitudes towards the different Social Media elements.

The group for the most part is made up of young business people:

Facebook – who uses it currently and who operates a “business page” for their business? Generally how do people view the benefit of using it for business?

• Everyone bar one has a personal facebook account – four are not very active
• Some lack of understanding between business pages and personal pages and the difference between each
• Only one person has advertised on facebook, but two have considered advertising on facebook in the past. Generally the group was not sure how the advertising would work for them.
  

Twitter – who uses it currently, socially and for business purposes? How do people view the benefit of it for business?

• Of the group there were two proactive users and two others using  it a little
• Most people are unclear about how it could benefit their business

LinkedIn – who uses it currently for business?

• 50% of  people are beginning to use it, but are not as active as they would like to be
• Of those that  have signed up it is a case of sign up and then don’t really come back to it

Tweetdeck – who uses this currently?

• Two of the group are using tweetdeck
• The others hadn’t really heard of it

Blogs – does anyone use blogs for their business or personal purposes?

• One person in the group was using blogs on the wordpress platform

Overall “Social Media” is a source of confusion with people, what to use and what not to use and in particular how to use it properly. The group are anxious in that there is a general acceptance that everyone should be doing more in this area with no clarity of how it should work for their business.

A common question with everyone is “how will I find the time?”

By the end of the session everyone left with a much clearer idea of what they should be using and how …. well at least hopefully !!

Greg Canty and Deirdre Waldron partners of  Fuzion Communications run the PR courses on behalf of South Cork Enterprise Board