Social Media Trends in Northeast Wisconsin

By: Kristin Rabas, Account Executive, Leonard & Finco Public Relations, Inc.

If you’re reading this blog, it’s a safe assumption that you use social media and are at least somewhat familiar with how it works. It’s also safe to assume that at one point, you questioned what impact social media was actually having in Northeast Wisconsin and how many people where actually jumping on the social media bandwagon.

To help answer some of those questions, Leonard & Finco Public Relations surveyed media and business professionals in Northeast Wisconsin in each of the last three years regarding their use of social media.

The most recent survey found that Facebook, at 80.7% of respondents, was the most popular social network used by the media, followed by Twitter (73%), YouTube (61.5%) and LinkedIn (46.1%).

As far as the reason media uses social media, two reponses tied for the top spot at 62.9%. They were to share news stores with others and to find contacts for interviews. Other popular responses included identifying story ideas and socializing/personal friendships.

The survey also identified that business professionals are using social media a little differently than the media when it comes to work. For business professionals in Northeast Wisconsin, LinkedIn was first at 63.9%. Not far behind was Facebook with 58.8%, Twitter at 41.1 % and YouTube at 27.9%.

While at work, business professionals indicated that they use social media the most for connecting/communicating with others in the community or their industry (56.8%). Other reasons that ranked high included promoting company news and information (48.2%), connecting/communicating with clients (47.4%) and directing others to a website (44.6%).

Of those who felt that social media has had a positive impact for their companies, the top reasons included networking (64.1%), improved client/customer relations (59.7%) and increased marketing opportunities (49.2%).

Overall the use of social media networks in Northeast Wisconsin has increased since Leonard & Finco’s first survey three years ago. Are you at all surprised about these results? If so, what did you think would be different?