McCann Erickson survey finds marketers are still 'uneasy' with social media
Many agencies and consultants are not providing enough guidance to clients on social media, a report by McCann Erickson Bristol has found.
The 2010 McCann Erickson Social Media Index has found that almost half of the marketing and communications professionals surveyed (48%) said that they don’t feel that they have adequate knowledge on how best to use social media to deliver effective marketing.
This figure has, however, decreased by 16% from last year when 64% of those polled by the same survey felt ill at ease with social media.
Nearly a quarter (23.4%) also admitted that it was difficult to keep up with the advances being made in social media while 22.4% said that it was not easy to find genuine ‘experts’ in the field.
The most popular brand monitoring tool was Google, with 45.5% of marketers using Google Alerst, while Radian 6 was the most widely used paid-for tool (14.3%).
11% said that they relied on their retained PR agency to monitor social media brand activity, while 37% admitted to in-house monitoring.
Joanna Randall, head of PR and social media communications at McCann Erickson Bristol, commented: “Some of these results are very encouraging; there is clearly an upward trend in overall usage of social media as a marketing communications channel. However, we would still like to see some of the barriers removed for UK marketers, particularly, where access is blocked at work and there is a clear need for more information and training specifically targeted to marketers.”
A study by Ofcom this week found that 90% of UK adults who use social media have a profile with social media giant Facebook.