Accountants have no idea of social media used by their firm
Just a fraction of accountants are aware of their firms' active engagement on social media, while they themselves are utilising its benefits
ACCOUNTANTS are failing to understand social media used by their firms to generate business development and sales according to research.
Just 17% of respondents said they did not know whether their firm was actively using LinkedIn, according to research from accountancy software providers CaseWare on the Top 100 firms. The IT business claims that the majority of large and mid-sized firm did use LinkedIn.
Employees were also largely unaware whether or not their firm actively used Twitter with just a quarter not knowing if their firm used this form of social media or Facebook, according to the 69 respondents.
Despite the lack of awareness amongst many accountants of their firm’s social media initiatives, most accountants are clearly aware of the importance of social media with 71% reporting that they personally use LinkedIn and 24% using Twitter for business.
Accountants were mostly engaged with LinkedIn, with 45% of respondents claiming they use it for business development and sales. However, just 8% use it for recruitment purposes, against 15% that use it for research on things such as prospective clients and 11% for communicating with clients. Less than 10% said they don’t use LinkedIn.
Twitter however, is used by 35% for business development and 17% to communicate with clients.
Simon Warren (pictured), managing director at CaseWare, said: “Social media is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, and businesses and people that do not recognise this are hardly going to come across as up-to-date business advisers.
“The key finding from this for accountancy firms is that they need to strongly communicate their social media activity to their employees to get much higher levels of awareness and support for it. Social media is powerful for business development, client communication and recruitment – but their initiatives are much less likely to succeed if their own employees are oblivious to them.”