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How is social media used at work? [#ChartoftheDay]

Author's avatar By Robert Allen 24 Aug, 2016
Essential Essential topic

If your creating B2B content for social, have you stopped and asked yourself what your audience actually uses social for?

You create content, you publish it and you promote it on social media. Create, Publish, Promote, Repeat. Yet have you ever thought to consider how your audience are actually using social media whilst they are at work? Are they using it to relax during a tea break? In which case humorous and easy to read content will do best. Or are they using it to learn more about their industry and discover new trends, in which case detailed thought leadership and posts providing industry specific stats will go down well.

New research from Pew Research Centre asked over 2000 American adults how they use social media at work, to discover what people are looking for when browsing during working hours. The results are interesting, and show how no one reason dominates.

The most common reason was to take a mental break from work, although this still only accounted for 1/3rd of respondents, highlights the diversity of uses. 1/5th used it to find information that solves problems at work, whilst only just over 1/10th used it for asking questions about work.

What US Adults use social media for at work

Author's avatar

By Robert Allen

Rob Allen is Marketing Manager for Numiko, a digital agency that design and build websites for purpose driven organisations, such as the Science Museum Group, Cancer Research UK, University of London and the Electoral Commission. Rob was blog editor at Smart Insights from 2015-2017. You can follow Rob on LinkedIn.

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