Current Social Media Trends in Canada

CNW and Leger Marketing report “public relations practitioners continue to find value in using social media, as consumer use of social networking tools grows.”

Here are key points taken from their recently conducted Social Media Reality Check 2.0.  The study explores professional communicators’ use of social media compared with consumer opinions about social media influence on their purchasing behavior.  A comparitive analysis of their year-over-year study reveals insight into how social media use has grown; campaign objectives and measurement, as well as gaps and overlaps in PR practitioner perception and the consumer reported reality.

Rising social media budgets

• The number of organizations that have a budget devoted to social media have doubled in two years (from 15% to 30%)
• 32% of professionals surveyed this year say they have a dedicated social media team in place

 Objectives remain informal

• Visibility (73%) and awareness (70%) are the top objectives for social media campaigns today
• Awareness (66%) and generating dialogue (59%) were the top objectives for social media campaigns in 2009
• 26% of those conducting social media campaigns have formal, measurable objectives in place

 Twitter use continues to grow

• Twitter usage has jumped to 76% from 39% of communications professionals in the last two years
• Their audience, however, is only using Twitter 32% of the time – up from 8% in 2009

 The influence of social media on consumers

• 37% of consumers say that they have purchased a product they heard about on social media first
• Half of respondents state that online reviews influence their purchasing behavior
• Consumers agree that social media influences smaller purchasing decisions such as which books to read and music to buy

Social Media Reality Check 2.0 was presented yesterday by CNW and Leger Marketing at the Canadian Public Relations Society Annual Conference. For details on the survey:

http://smr.newswire.ca/en/cnw/study-use-of-social-media-in-public-relations-campaigns