Building Connections: A Study in Social Media

In PR, knowing market trends is a foundational element of doing business. In the last few years, nothing has made a bigger impact than the expansion of Social Media.

“Social media is a rapidly growing communications outlet that has proven to be effective in increasing a company’s brand, awareness, relationship with its’ audience and ultimately sales,” said Dana Castle, principal and director of strategy for Function:.These trends aren’t just rumors—they are studied and analyzed by people who want to understand market changes. Facebook was recently named the most popular website in the United States, with users spending an average of seven hours a month on the site and over 50 percent of users logging on at least once a day. A Harvard Business Review study concluded that businesses that create fan pages on the site have noticeably higher foot traffic and overall business. The architecture and design community, where Function is most invested, is not blind to these trends and seems to be increasing their visibility on these sites daily.

Recently, Function: conducted a study of the social media habits of over 600 architects. The study revealed that 10 percent of architects are active on Facebook, five percent use Twitter, 28 percent use Amazon’s social features, and 35 percent of those surveyed are on LinkedIn. The less popular social networking sites like Myspace, Flickr and StumbleUpon account for another nine percent. The results of this study indicate that architects continue to focus social media usage on sites that are targeted on generating professional connections, with LinkedIn holding the most participation. The upward trends of architects with accounts on Twitter and Facebook shows an active interest in larger community engagement and the increasing appeal of sites with multiple social, professional and business-related purposes.

“The key to successful social media is in knowing your audience,” said Dana. “For Building Product Manufacturers, this means understanding what social media outlets architects or contractors are using, why they are using them and the messages they are interested in receiving. Function: specializes in reaching these audiences and can connect manufacturers to their influencers in the right way.

For more information on how you can reach your target audience via social media, contact Ted Hettick ([email protected]).

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