State Of Social Media In Belgium Report

STATE OF SOCIAL
MEDIA IN BELGIUM

AUGUST 2010

How well are companies taking advantage of
social media and are they really monitoring
it?

Mic Adam
Vanguard Leadership

Vanguard Leadership © August 2010 Page 1

Foreword
Social media is here to stay. Companies can no longer ignore the power of social
media since their employees, clients and competitors are joining the “movement”
fast. Companies must accept that they are being talked about on the worldwide
web and in social media. Companies and marketers are loosing control over the
“message” since consumers, clients and even employees comment on the topic.

The popularity of a number of social media platforms is just amazing and growth
seems to be never ending. There is always a new and fancy platform or
application being added. Last year it was Twitter (1.300% growth), this year it
seems to be geo-location with Foursquare being the leading player.

With that in mind, monitoring of what is being said about you as a company;
product or even person becomes a must. Companies will tell you they are
monitoring the conversation, but the reality is that even they, mostly the
marketers, do not always grasp how to do this.

Social media is about interaction, some call it engagement, with the customer. It
becomes a two-way conversation. Or that is what we are led to believe. Many
opportunities are left unanswered because either companies are not present in
social media or when present they do not respond or react.

To try and understand whether companies are present in social media and
listening, Vanguard Leadership has done a “Social Media Monitoring” study in
the Belgian market place. This report summarizes the findings.

About Vanguard Leadership

Vanguard Leader is a Social Media Policy Consultancy company that focuses
on helping companies and individuals protect their reputation in social media
by providing awareness about social media, creating and implementing social
media policies, providing customized trainings and workshops and doing
social media monitoring in an outsourced model.


Table of Contents
1. Introduction Page 4
2. Overview of the methodology Page 5
3. Visibility Page 6
3.1 Overall visibility Page 7
3.2 Where do companies have social media profiles? Page 8
4. Are you listening? Page 9
4.1 Twitter monitoring Page 10
4.2 Facebook monitoring Page 11
4.3 LinkedIn Page 12
4.3.1 Status Update Page 12
4.3.2 Groups & Discussion Page 13
4.3.3 Answers Page 14
4.3.4 Polls Page 15
4.3.5 Companies Page 16
5. Conclusions Page 18
6. Recommendations and tips Page 19
7. Contact information Page 20


1. Introduction

There is a lot of hype around social media which makes it difficult for companies
to decide when to jump on the bandwagon or wait a while till some of this dust
settles down and then make a big entrance.

More and more companies are creating social media profiles but it is fair to say
that this is for a lot of companies not part of a well thought out strategy. It’s kind
of a getting their feet wet by sticking their toes into the water. There are 2 major
questions to be answered: know what to do with it and how does it fit in into the
business.

In order to get a sense of how well companies monitor social media, it is good to
also shed some light on the level that companies are visible in social media. That
is why this survey will look into 2 areas:

 How present and visible are companies in social media
 How well do they engage or monitor their own accounts

It is clear that this research will not catch all monitoring that is being done since a
lot of companies by means of individual accounts seem to be, at least that is what
marketers tell us, monitoring social media platforms. This research will not
address this type of monitoring or presence which is by nature anonymous and not
really traceable.

This research will not focus on social media types such as blogging, video, photo,
bookmarking and alike.


2. Overview of the study method
Target Companies
Over 540 companies (located in Belgium) of all sizes have been selected to serve
as a baseline for this research. List includes companies
i. All BEL-20 companies (Top listed accounts on belgian stock exchange)
ii. Trendsgazellen 2010 (Fastest growers in 2009)
1) Brussels – large companies
2) Antwerp – medium sized companies
iii. Miscellaneous companies from various sources and sizes

Company Analysis
The desk research and analysis was done by
 Searches in most popular social media (Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin)
1. Do companies have a presence (profile) on social media?
2. Where do they have these profiles?
 Visiting all website of the 540 companies looking for
1. Are they making these profiles visible on their website?
2. How easily can it be found?

Social Media Monitoring
Monitoring can done in different ways on different platforms, but for the purpose
of this research we have limited the responsiveness of companies in the 3 most
popular media: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (B2B orientation).

Twitter: In order to check whether companies are really monitoring their
Twitter accounts, hopefully identifiable with the company, a 3 step
approach was put in place:.
(1) a generic tweet was sent and asked for a response
(2) a more specific Tweet was sent asking for relevant info
(3) a complaint message was sent about not listening

Facebook monitoring consisted of “LIKING” the page of the company
and leaving messages on the Wall or Related wall. Here too a response
was asked.

LinkedIn: Although LinkedIn is more a networking tool, it is highly used
in B2B to set up contacts but also share information about companies and
topics. The definition of monitoring had to be modified a little to include
this research. Monitoring on LinkedIn consisted of the commenting on
posts in groups, answers and status updates.


3. Visibility
As indicated in the introduction, a lot of companies enter social media but they
make it not very visible. In today’s business, every company has a website as a
landing page for their different audiences. So a good place to start looking for
social media presence is the company website.

The first hurdle is finding the links to the profiles on the website. Some
companies have them on the landing page while others hide them somewhere else
in areas such as “Contacts” or “Links”. Secondly, companies create or use not
easy to find back names especially in Twitter. It feels like they want to be
anonymous.

The research has used the term social media in the large sense of the word
including not only Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. but also items such as RSS
feeds.


3.1. Overall visibility
The study analyzed 540 companies’ websites and the conclusions are

 71% of all companies have a presence of some kind in social media
 1 in 3 companies have no company social media profile at all

Social Media Presence

Not Present
29%

Present
71%

All things being equal, this does not mean that companies have not started their
first steps in social media. It is highly likely that one or more of their employees
are getting their feet wet without being linked to the company.

When it comes to mentioning their presence on their website, we can look at 2
different metrics: the whole group and only those that are really present. This
gives us the following results:
 All companies:
o 1 in 4 (25%) companies mentions their social media profiles on
their website
o 3 in 4 (75%) companies do not mention social media on their
website
 Companies with social media profiles:
o 1 in 3 (33%) companies mentions their social media profiles on
their website
o 2 in 3 (67%) companies do not mention social media on their
website

Social media profiles on Website Social media on Website

Yes
25% Yes
35%

No
No 65%
75%


3.2. Where do companies have social media profiles?
When it comes to where companies are present, it becomes clear that the 3
dominant platforms are LinkedIn (B2B), Facebook (BC2 mainly) and Twitter.
The study did not investigate corporate blogging in this study.

In terms of video platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) and picture platforms (Flickr,
Picasa, etc.), the numbers are so small (under 10%) that they have not been
subject to detailed research this study.

It is fair to claim that business platforms such as LinkedIn are being embraced
more easily than social media that is considered personal (Facebook, Twitter,…).

We have to keep in mind that there is practice to block social media in companies
thus leading to a lesser presence of certain companies. From previous research
from various sources including our own (March 2010), we know that companies
tend to block certain social media for various reasons (time wasting, reputation
management, bandwidth, etc.). It goes as far as 50% of companies that block
access to social media. These media include but are not limited to Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube.

However, the research shows that:

 67% of all companies have a company profile on LinkedIn
 48% of companies have a Facebook presence
 35% of all companies have an (identifiable) Twitter presence

A fair comment on the last point being that some companies might be present but
under a name that is not easily related to the company name or business.

Social media platform presence

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn


4. Are you listening?
It is one thing to be present on social media but it is another to use it to connect
with to your customers. “Social” being the hype it is, companies are jumping on
the bandwagon and interpreting what that “social” should mean. For some it is
seen as a “new” channel to shout AT the clients while others understand the
engagement model it really should be.

Social media monitoring is therefore one of the hot topics at this time. Though
companies claim they are listening to social media, there is limited research
available on what that actually means.

The first question that needs to be answered is what social media monitoring
really consists of. Here are 3 possible definitions or areas to consider for
companies:
 Monitoring of what is being said about the company and its brands?
 Monitoring for trends about the general business, competition, etc.?
 Monitoring what employees are saying in social media?

Monitoring by itself is not enough; you also need to do something with it which is
the engagement piece and the true nature of a good social media strategy.

There are many tools available that do some kind of monitoring. They vary from
free tools and services over freemium accounts to payable services. However, the
technology and software application are still in an early stage of development
even though the software vendors will argue otherwise. One of the major missing
components is a good monitoring of LinkedIn activity. Put them to the test and
see what fits your needs and requirements! Keep in mind that you might need a
few different tools to have a complete picture.

The best way to see if companies monitor their social media is to contact them
directly on social media and see what kind of response you get. We have done
this on the 3 major social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. We
must admit that the latter has posed somewhat of a challenge and lead to some
creative thinking around this topic.


4.1. Twitter Monitoring
For all companies that have a relevant and easily found Twitter name, we used a 3
step approach. In step 1 we sent a generic message asking for a Tweet back on
my message. Step 2 consisted in asking a relevant question (“where do I buy your
product) and step 3 was the sending of a complaint.

Twitter Replies

Reply
44%
No Reply
56%

There are two ways to look at this result. On the one hand, 56% do monitor and
respond to comments on their tweet wall. On the other hand, still 44% of the
companies that HAVE a Twitter account do NOT respond. As to the why for not
responding we can only guess the reasons.

We want to categorize them as follows:
 This name is a dormant name (name claimed for future use) – no followers
 The company is not listening/monitoring this account – it is someone’s toy
 The company is using Twitter to “shout” at the world and not to engage


4.2. Facebook Monitoring
Facebook with its 500 million members is mainly seen as a personal networking
platform. However, more and more businesses are discovering potential customers
and suppliers. The initial drive is of course B2C companies but there seems to be
also some uptake on the B2B side.

About half the companies seem to have a Fan page on Facebook Of those who had a
page the statistics are shocking:
 20% have a page but no fans and no comment – these pages were claimed
before some else stepped in but not used.
 43% have a page with a few (under 25) followers and at least one post – no
promotion or visibility given (employees and family only).
 19% have a page with some followers and a good amount of own posts – the
page is used as another form of cheap advertizing but no interaction allowed
or requested.
 18% seem to be good examples that have interaction with their community.
Monitoring test: After having posted messages on the wall or created posts from
related friends (showing on the wall), the result of response is very disappointing.
Only a 4% response rate!

Facebook Presence

Page Only Starters Advertizers Conversationalist
v


4.3. LinkedIn Monitoring
Social media monitoring in LinkedIn is somewhat tricky. Unlike other platforms
where companies can be directly reached, LinkedIn is more based on individuals
that are part of companies. Looking at what can be monitored in LinkedIn; here is
the list of items I have looked at:
 Status updates of individuals
 Comments on discussions in groups
 Answers in the “Question and Answer” section
 Number of people following the company profile
 Answers in polls

4.3.1. Status Updates
Blair Joss did an experiment using his status update area to request either a
comment or a LIKE. Joss had 403 connections. Within 3 days he had 350 people
commenting and over 1,700 people saying “LIKE” his update. Obviously, people
outside his network picked up this message and responded, including myself.

We decided to repeat the same experiment on Mic Adam’s network (over 1,400
people strong). During one week we solicited directly a comment or “LIKE” via
my status update. The message read: “SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING RESEARCH -
YOUR INPUT NEEDED: I am currently doing a major study on social media monitoring
and LinkedIn is part of it. If you have seen and read my status update please indicate so
by leaving me a comment/like. In a week's time I will report back with my results via my
status update.”

The result is very disappointing since we only got 4 reactions. We are convinced
his contacts have seen this message; but it has not inspired them to take part in the
experiment. We decided to repeat the experiment using a more interesting trigger,
namely a copy of this report before it gets published. The result here is similar,
namely 5 responses.


4.3.2. Discussions & Groups
Groups within LinkedIn are one of the key areas to interact with other members.
Groups are mostly created around subjects or similar functions. We went on to
analyze a number of Belgian groups to get some insight about the interaction in
these groups.

The average number of members in the group was 705 with the low extreme of 57
and the high extreme of 2.495 members.

Discussions in groups
1%
1%
5%
15%

No comment
1-5 comments
78%
6-20comments
21-50 comments
50+ comments

Here is what you can expect from LinkedIn discussions in groups:
 78% of all discussions analyzed had “No Comments”.
 One caveat is that we have to careful with this number since this group of
discussion includes event announcements and link addresses to news
items. However, 25% of these discussions are truly unanswered topics.
 15% of all discussion topics generate less than 5 answers with the focus
being on ONE answer.
 Groups that reach out to a worldwide population obviously have more
chances to get answered. But the again, Belgians are not known for their
level of contribution to open discussions like this.
 The most popular discussions are those where members indicate they will
not reject an invitation to connect (members will ACCEPT or ARCHIVE
the request). The consequence of rejection is that your account gets
somewhat blocked by LinkedIn if you have too many rejected invitations.
 We found at least 3 Belgian discussions (140, 170 and 800+ comments)
that promote this practice. This is inherently against the rules of usage
within LinkedIn but allowed for the moment.
 We have also posted a message to reply to in some groups (including
VOKA and UNIZO groups) to see whether people saw this message. I
only ended up with 10 responses!


4.3.3. Answers
We also reviewed and analyzed the ANSWERS section of LinkedIn. This is the
area where members can post general questions. I have analyzed over 500
questions and the results are as follows.

Answers

8% 1% 12%

No comment
35%
44% 1-5 comments
6-20comments
21-50 comments
50+ comments

The results can be summarized as follows:
 Unlike groups where you receive emails when new discussions or comments are
posted, the members of LinkedIn make a conscience decision go to the “Answer”
section. The drive and motivation comes from the fact that members can increase
their “Top Expert” status by answering as many questions in a qualitative manner
(judged by the author of the question).
 The answer section of LinkedIn is of course a worldwide activity. You can
however select different languages but Dutch is unfortunately not an option.
 Fewer questions remain unanswered (12%) while as to the quality of the answers
it is up to the asker to indicate who gave the best answer. Peer review is key here.


4.3.4. Polls
Another form of listening is posting and answering polls. Polls typically do not
appear on your home page of LinkedIn (even though you can set this). So
answering polls is even more influenced by the topic at hand. From the analysis
of a few hundred polls the results in terms of expected answer rate is:

Poll Participation

60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
No 1 - 5 6 - 20 21 - 51 - 251 - 1000+
votes votes votes 50 250 1,000 votes
votes votes votes

 Theoretically every polls should have at least one answer namely from the
person starting the poll, but as I could see this is not always the case.
 Most polls actually get a few votes with 6-20 answers being the most
popular.
 Around 70% of all polls get a participation of between 1 and 20 answers.


4.3.4. Companies
Recently LinkedIn added the functionality of “follow a company”. We have
looked at how many followers companies in Belgium have. There are 4.491
Belgian Company profile in LinkedIn.

Belgium is known as a country dominated by Small and Medium Sized
Businesses (SME). Overall, LinkedIn confirms this state of the economy with
SMEs dominating the overall picture of companies that have a profile in
LinkedIn.

Company profile in LinkedIn

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1-10 11-50 51-200 201-500 501-1000 1.001- 5.000-
5.000 10.000

Over 57% are small businesses with less than 10 employees. The next 34% are
companies up to 200 employees. Leaving the last 9% for those with more than
200 employees.


In terms of the number of people following them it is difficult to apply the same
metric. We have taken a look at 3 groups: 5.000 to 10.000 employees, 51-200
employees and 1 to 10 employees

Followers of company profile

100%
80%
5K-10K
60%
51-250
40%
1-10
20%
0%

or 01- 0
an 00
25 5 0

50 0 0
51 0

00
10 0
25

10 10 0
-5

0

20

20
-1

2

5
26
an

1-

1-

1-
th

th
ss
Le

e
M

Looking at the spread (in %) of the followers in the three groups, we there are
some amazing facts to be observed:
 Large companies (only 81 in this category) do not have that many
followers in fact the numbers seem very low which points to the fact that
even their employees are not following them. This might point to a lack
of strategy to make the employees the ambassadors for the company.
 In the medium sized companies there is an even spread of followers in
each counting category.
 In terms of the small companies, the number vary between 1 (mostly the
owner) and 10 followers and is much in line with the company size.


5. Conclusions
Even though social media today is a hot topic for many companies, it seems that
that their uptake is sporadic and missing a clear strategy. A lot of the efforts are
driven by individuals within organizations.

There are of course 2 things that are clear:
 A large number of companies are only getting their feet wet (71% without
giving it any visibility (25%) to the outside world.
 Companies claim to be monitoring their social media accounts but they do
not engage their customer (Twitter less than 44% and Facebook 4%).

The reasons for this can be summarized as follows:
On the presence side:
 Companies do know what social media can do for them
 There is no plan for social media in the company strategy
 There is a lack of time and resources to get started

On the monitoring side:
 Not knowing what tools to use to efficiently monitor
 Companies are not used and thus afraid of engaging the customer
 Companies do not see the ROI (what is reputation worth?)


6. Recommendations
So with this report in mind, we would like to conclude with some recommend-
dations. There are many best practices, tips and tricks available on web which
can be found. In a similar study done by Wildfire PR in UK, they went so far as
to outline tips for each social media type. Their summary is very complete and
we would like to pick out some of the most important one’s while adding some
tips of our own from our own experience.

Getting started
1. Create awareness on social media for ALL your employees not just
marketing.
2. Create an inventory of where your current and future audiences are on
social media.
3. Create and implement a social media policy and inform ALL employees
of this policy.
4. Create a social media plan and make it part of the company strategy.
5. Commit resources (people, time and money) to implement, and monitor
your social media presence

Visibility
1. If and when you have social media profiles, put the links on your website!
2. Tell people what to expect when the join you in social media land.
3. Have your staff become ambassadors for the company by following your
company social media profiles.

Twitter
1. Use a representative Twitter name by which you can be found easily.
2. Give followers a reason to follow you and click through on your links.
3. Respond to tweets!

Facebook
1. Post updates regularly and include items such as video, photo, comments.
2. Encourage comment posting and respond to them
3. Do not be too commercial.

LinkedIn
1. Create or update your company profile.
2. Create groups and maintain good content discussions. Appoint good
moderator who keeps discussions going.
3. Have your employees endorse (follow) your company.

It is clear that other social media such as blogging, video (e.g YouTube for
company video’s), photo sites (e.g. Flickr) are also part of social media and can
be used to create engagement with the customers. For more tips, I would like to
refer you the Wildfire paper (http://www.wildfirepr.co.uk/tech_social_media).


7. Contact information
For more information on the market research or on the solutions contact:

Mic Adam
Social Media Policy Creator – General Manager
Vanguard Leadership
Website: www.vanguard-leadership.be
Phone: +32 478 50 41 35
e-mail: adammic@vanguard-leadership.be


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