PRX Releases

In april and May 2008, Leads United conducted a research on the attitudes of 70 communications professionals based in Belgium towards their (non)use of social media.

• Results :
  • The overall potential of social media tools is estimated by the majority (64%) of respondents as moderate to low.
  • Only 24% of respondents use RSS feeds. Though 48% of respondents are convinced of the opportunities they provide.
  • Only 1 of 70 communication professionnals is an active wiki user in the context of business communications.
  • Though 46% of respondents indicated that they passively use them regularly outside the context of business communications use (Wikipedia).
  • Compared to the Leads United corporate blogging survey of last year, the implementation of blogging guidelines has risen from 4% in 2007 to 20% in 2008
  • When speaking about strategically applying social media tools to business communications, it is seen in this order :

    First: external communications

    Second: internal communications

    Third: crisis communications

  • Scale of popularity of other social media tools for internal and external communications:
    • Social networks – 37% are active users
    • Blogs – 27% are active users 
    • Videocasts – 20% are active users
    • Podcasts – 14% are active users
  • 57% of respondents believe that social media are particularly well suited as a channel for external communications.
  • 10% of respondents indicated social media can be used in crisis communications.
• The term ‘social media’ appears not to have caught on at all with communications managers. 68% of respondents stated that they were not aware of the term ‘social media’.