7. Social Media

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Social media marketing (SMM) is not just the preserve of geeks or big-budget advertisers, but increasingly is being used by smaller businesses. The sceptics might wonder why – and where are the business benefits? A new survey gets behind SMM use among Irish SMEs.

While there is much international research on this theme, similar research in an Irish context has been in short supply. And while the sample size is relatively small, with 48 companies participating, it does offer insights into Irish SMEs and their use of sites like YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Why embrace SMM? As the graph shows, there was a mix of reasons, with promoting the business and enriching the marketing mix in the top slots. Almost half of the respondents use SMM to help the sales effort, while there is evidence that there are some evangelists out there, with “management enthusiasm” being cited by 38% of the sample.

Source: David Scanlon, Enterprise Ireland, Cost/Benefit Analysis of Social Media Marketing, 2009

Back to contents of State of the Net issue 15