A survey by Comcast revealed Canadians to be the most active users of social media globally. Over 50% of all Canadians are currently using Facebook - representing over 80% of all internet users in the country. As a percentage of internet users, Canadians are extremely engaged in social media:
However, a recent report by BMO reveals that Canadian businesses are failing to keep up with their consumer counterparts in adopting social media. A total of 29% of businesses identified that they were actively using social media sites to promote their business, compared to 43% in the United States
Two comments in particular stood out for me as I read through the details:
Only 17 percent of 1,000 executives surveyed recently say they use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to regularly post updates as well as monitor what's being said about their business. And this means they're losing a valuable opportunity to engage their online audience.A startling 49 percent of respondents to this survey said that their company does no social media monitoring whatsoever, indicating that a lack of resources prevents them. It's clearly time the CEOs of Canada opened their eyes to the tremendous opportunities on Twitter and other social networks, and diverted some of their TV or print advertising dollars to exploring social media.
So clearly there is a gap between the consumer desire to interact via social media and business' readiness to do so. In fact, another interesting article pointed out that "Brands Ignore Nearly 50% Of Consumers' Facebook Posts" . The report found that brands responded to customers via twitter 61% of the time and only 55% of the time via Facebook
It appears that when it comes to businesses leveraging social media, two issues persist:
a. Canadian companies are not adopting new online technologies fast enough - either due to their lack of knowledge of the tools available, or because they feel that these media are not valuable tools.
b. Businesses that do leverage social media do not have the tools and processes required to fully respond to social media with the right velocity and depth
For mid-size and enterprise organizations, the contact center is one area of the business that is pivotal to engage when creating a system to interact with customers via social media, and is something that I covered in some detail in a series of previous posts.
Offers such as Avaya's social media manager and Avaya social media consulting services can help businesses get up to speed in monitoring social media platforms and responding to customers much more quickly and completely, allowing them to build a better brand image in this new connected landscape. With a growing demand from consumers for businesses to engage with them via social media, the ability to route social media messages throughout an organization for prompt responses will become a key competitive differentiator - and one that may provide the key to helping Canadian businesses' bridge the social media chasm between them and their consumers.
With 2012 quickly approaching, make the news resolution to get on social media and engage with your customers!
Posted 20 Dec 2011 at 09:45 AM