We recently conducted a survey in collaboration with the University of Chichester to understand the impact of social media on engineers. The report abstract states:
This joint project between Napier and the University of Chichester aims to understand whether engineers make use of social media, and if so whether social media provides an effective marketing channel to electronics design engineers in Europe. The research reveals that whilst engineers are making use of online tools to communicate and collaborate – particularly forums and LinkedIn – there appears to be a significant resistance to social media and viral marketing amongst a large section of the engineering audience.
I’m really excited to have completed this project, which shows that although there is some reluctance amongst engineers to adopt social media, the technology is being used to source information about companies and products as well as to collaborate with colleagues. The summary report is available online as a downloadable PDF. A full set of results is also available in Excel format, and are available on request – simply send me an email.