Although the penetration of social networking sites in Malta is ubiquitous in terms of personal and business users, facts and figures in this field have rarely been available, especially when considering the relationship between social media and business use.
One business that has long held an interest in this lack of business knowledge is the local web development company Icon.
Icon surveyed local companies in various business areas, including IT, the arts, construction, retail, hospitality and tourism, finance, consultancy, medical, transportation, non-profit, insurance, recruitment, real estate, catering, security and media.
The findings are surprising in some areas and predictable in others, Icon said. Predictably, the majority of local companies are already using social media for marketing purposes – however, at 85 per cent, the percentage was significantly higher than expected.
Half of the respondents questioned strongly believe social media is of importance to their business, while a further 39 per cent say it is extremely important to their activities, even though only 69 per cent of respondents sell their products or services directly online.
Ninety-one per cent of Maltese marketers use Facebook for their business, while Youtube is a distant second, sitting at just above 40 per cent. Twitter and Linkedin are almost head to head in terms of marketing usage, while blogs come in fifth position.
This pervasiveness notwithstanding, marketing on social media in Malta is still at an early stage for many. Fifty-eight per cent of Icon research respondents have been using social media for marketing purposes for under one year, while only nine per cent have used social media for over three years.
Given the novel nature of social media marketing, it is understandable that 18 per cent of the marketers questioned are unsure as to what genres of content are suited for which social network, while others are uncertain how their marketing plan can incorporate the multiple social networks available.
However, Icon said the trend that emerges from the research is that the longer a marketer has been using social media for marketing purposes, the more time they spend weekly on social media activities.
This clearly indicates that experience draws marketers to deepen their interaction and consequently multiply their engagement time, Icon said.
A similarly interesting trend is also visible in the case of age groups – the younger the marketers are, the more time they spend using social media for marketing related purposes. This is naturally a consequence of early adoption of social media by younger users who are now within the workforce.
Measuring the return on investment when marketing on social networks is of great interest to the respondents – just under half the marketers questioned would like to know how to better measure the effects of social media on their business.
The lack of ability to measure effectiveness is probably one of the major barriers companies face when they consider entering the social media fray, according to Icon.
One thing that is certain is there is a hunger for information. Although it is a fair assumption to say that for businesses in Malta, Facebook is the social network of choice, marketers want to find out more about other social media tools and techniques that can help their businesses, Icon concluded.
The full report is available at www.icon.com.mt/socialmedia.