By Jill Sakai and Chris Barncard
Earlier this year, the Public Information Officers’ committee developed a short survey to gather information about how PIOs are using social media to enhance communications goals.
The survey was distributed in September via email to the 610 NASW members who self-identified as PIOs. A call was also sent out via NASW-Announce to reach people who may do some public information work but did not check the PIO box on the NASW membership form.
Questions focused on what types of social media tools PIOs and their organizations are using, how and why they are using these tools, and who they hope to reach. We also collected some basic demographic information about the respondents and their organizations.
One hundred thirty-five (135) members completed the survey, for a response rate of 22 percent. Overall, the survey results and respondent comments indicate that social media use is complex, evolving, and frequently not well defined. This type of survey is naturally limited in its ability to capture the full range of experiences, but we can report some preliminary findings.
The most commonly used tools among communication offices are Twitter, Facebook, and video sharing sites (such as YouTube and Vimeo). LinkedIn is popular for individuals but less so for offices, which suggests it is used more for personal professional development than for organizational communication goals. The most used products also emerge as those most likely to have been in use for longer periods of time (at least three years).
Research- or science-specific accounts in general do not seem to be overwhelmingly popular, but blogs and Twitter are the most common targeted platforms, with science-specific efforts reported by more than half of respondents who use those tools. Facebook and podcasts are the next most common, reported by greater than 30 percent of users of these platforms.
The general public emerged as the number one targeted audience, selected by 92 percent of survey respondents, with news media a close second (86 percent). Internal audiences, such as students, faculty, employees, or patients, seem to form a secondary but still very important core target group for PIO social media efforts. Other designated audiences include special-interest groups, thought leaders and policymakers, funding agencies, and potential customers.
Interestingly, people want to reach the media but not necessarily with the intention of pitching stories, which was listed as a goal by just 45 percent of respondents. Instead, the primary goals of social media efforts are distributing news and information (93 percent) and building community (82 percent). Perhaps this should not be surprising — as one respondent commented in response to a question about interactions between staff and readers, “It is ‘social media,’ after all.”
Other defined goals include education/outreach, increasing general visibility of an organization, marketing, and reaching targeted sub-audiences.
The emphasis on reaching general audiences may be indicative of shifts toward direct-to-reader communication rather than relying on news media to deliver messages to readers. Social media platforms certainly lend themselves well to direct communication, and it is interesting to speculate — though beyond the scope of our survey results — whether such trends are a natural outgrowth of using social media or are in fact driving social media adoption. (We would guess the latter.)
Not surprisingly, social media is just one of many PIO duties. The vast majority of respondents (93 percent) spend one-quarter or less of their time on social media, and 64 percent report spending no more than 10 percent of their time on it. However, 18 percent of those who filled out the survey report that their office includes at least one person with full-time social media responsibilities. On the flip side, 29 percent report that social media duties are not formally assigned at all in their offices.
Evaluating the effectiveness of social media efforts is a more challenging area to explore. Many respondents report tracking quantitative measures such as numbers of subscribers, re-tweets, page views, or web traffic, as well as more qualitative evidence such as reader comments. However, our survey did not delve more deeply into how these measures are used to guide social media use, which would be interesting fodder for follow-up questions.
The survey responses include representations of different age ranges and duration of PIO experience. Responses to most questions were similar between age and experience groups, with few major differences with regard to adoption and use of various social media tools.
The most notable differences relate to the respondents’ own social media activities. Sixty-six percent of PIOs with more than 10 years of experience (n=58) reported social media duties among their own work responsibilities, compared to 82 percent of PIOs with fewer than 10 years of experience (n=74). Similarly, 72 percent of the former group spend less than 10 percent of their time on social media, and none spend more than 50 percent of their time. Among the group with fewer than 10 years of experience, just 57 percent report spending less than 10 percent of their time on social media, and four percent devote at least half their time to these efforts.
At least some of these distinctions may be correlated with age. Ninety percent of the more experienced PIO group reported being more than 40 years old, and comparisons of PIOs 40 and younger versus those 41 and up revealed similar patterns as those described above: 64 percent of the older group (n=75) have social media duties at work compared to 89 percent of the younger group (n=54). In the older group, 72 percent spend less than 10 percent of their time on social media and none spend more than half their time. In the younger group, 49 percent spend less than 10 percent of their time on social media and six percent devote at least half their time.
Other reported duties are more evenly distributed between the age and experience groups, although older and more experienced PIOs are slightly more likely to be responsible for managing staff and younger PIOs are slightly more likely to maintain their organization’s website. Stated goals and target audiences are also generally similar except that more older and more experienced PIOs listed alumni and donors as key social media audiences. Curiously, PIOs with fewer than 10 years of experience were somewhat less likely to identify news media as a key audience (82 vs. 91 percent), but both targeting media (92 vs. 85 percent) and pitching stories (56 vs. 37 percent) were important for more PIOs 40 and under when compared to the older group.
Nearly half of the respondents are at educational institutions, with the remainder split among medical centers or hospitals, government agencies non-profits, companies, and other. Because of this, some of the trends noted here may be more applicable to colleges and universities than to other types of organizations, although no clear differences in social media use or goals emerged from a preliminary comparison of responses from those at schools versus other organizations.
We are still delving into other ways to look at the data. If you have suggestions or particular subanalyses you’d like to see, please let us know. The survey results are easy to export in a variety of formats to look at different subsets of respondents.
A complete version of the survey questions can be seen at bit.ly/Te5ynu.
