Social media top source of news: Which channel do you find most useful for building and architecture industry?

Social media has become one of the top news sources, but only two-thirds of businesses in the building, construction, architecture and design industries are on social media according to a survey conducted by Infolink.com.au.

Back in December, ArchitectureandDesign launched a poll on which social media tools you find most effective. This began a discussion on social media in the building industry.

Building On Air said they were pretty new to the realm of social media and were deciding whether to focus on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to engage with their audience.

“It seems like most companies have created accounts on all social media platforms, but they hardly use Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter is more interactive and seems to work for us better.”

Total Synergy commented that the research outcomes were interesting, though the Australian AEC sector is quite far behind the UK when it comes to business social media.

“In our own client research we have over 51% on LinkedIn, 27% on Facebook, 21% blogging, 14% on Twitter and a scattering of others (on doesn't mean using effectively, of course). We're now also seeing marked growth in use of visual channels like Pinterest and Instagram.”

Finally, mayvintraining commented, “Every business, regardless of the product or service the provide, must understand that people communicate via social media now and whether they choose to be part of the online conversations or not will impact the bottom line (if it hasn’t already).”

Additionally, the Business Insider reported on the value of social media, saying images of retailers’ merchandise on social media increases the visibility of the product and leads to an increase in sales.

Surprisingly, Google+ has the highest value of a share, with Facebook coming in second, followed by Pinterest and Twitter.

However, unsurprisingly, a new infographic about social media replacing traditional journalism as a news source shows that more than 50 per cent of people learned about breaking news via social media rather than an official news source.

Already we have seen that Google+ is ranking very strongly in the survey, but is this the social channel of choice? Please take a few seconds to look at the current results and vote on our poll at the right of your screen.