I started work on a project to look at the use of social media by engineers some months ago, which has produced some interesting results. We’re sponsoring research that is being conducted by Chichester University and although the fuill analysis won’t be available until the end of July, I wanted to share some of the initial results with you.
To date we have received almost 300 responses to the survey, providing a sample size that is more than sufficient to draw clear conclusions. Some of the provisional results are:
61% believed social media was a useful business tool, although 28% were blocked from using these tools at work
30% currently use social media for work, 44% for personal reasons, but a surprising 46% don’t use social media at all
Only 5% use Twitter more than once a week, whereas 28% are frequent users of Facebook
Linkedin is the clear choice for business use, with 24% using the site more than once a week
The most popular form of social media for business use are forums, with 45% of the respondents using forums for business purposes.
The results will be available in a month’s time, so if you want to make sure your get a copy of the report when it is available, please email me.
