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O P I N I O N
Crack the whip
Firms are using social media for marketing, but the frequency, consistency, and quality of the content needs to improve.
C haos. Zero strategy. Lack of metrics. Zweig Group’s just released 2018 Marketing Survey shows that while more firms than ever are embracing the use of social media, they still don’t feel it is an effective way to market. The reason may not lie in the medium itself, but instead in the fact that many are not employing the discipline needed to make it effective.
Christina Zweig Niehues
numbers show most firms are walking into the room, shouting something random – once – and then leaving the room for a week or more. The survey found that 78 percent of firms are not “A social media platform is like a huge, crowded party with music playing and drinks being served and everyone having their own conversations. The numbers show most firms are walking into the room, shouting something random – once – and then leaving the room for a week or more.”
In 2018, 92 percent of survey respondents stated they had a presence on LinkedIn, 86 percent on Facebook, 54 percent on Twitter, and 28 percent on Instagram. The most frequent platform to post on is Twitter, which on average AEC firms are doing at least twice monthly. Firms are also using Facebook and Linkedin on an average bi-monthly basis – not nearly enough to even be marginally effective. On a platform like Twitter, the scrolling news feed of bite-sized information means that even weekly tweets are not going to work. They will just get lost in a mass of other information. It’s something that needs daily attention, and something almost no firms are doing. Marketing is about relationships, and engagement is an important component of social media. A social media platform is like a huge, crowded party with music playing and drinks being served and everyone having their own conversations. The
See CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER November 5, 2018, ISSUE 1271
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