- Adam Riddell, Director
The Crown Dependency Social Media Survey 2017
‘Mixed Messages’
In the first quarter of 2017, Crystal PR surveyed journalists at a range of media organisations across Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man to get a better picture of their use of social media.
Here are the headline results (% rounded to nearest whole number)…
Using Social Media:
Our 2014 survey found that 3% of journalists never used social media for work. Now, in our 2017 survey, there is not one respondent who claimed they never use social media.
Two-thirds of all Crown Dependency (CD) media surveyed spend more than 1 hour per day on social media for work purposes.
When broken down by jurisdiction: 47% of Jersey respondents, and 71% of Guernsey respondents spend 1-2 hours per day on social media. Meanwhile, 67% of Isle of Man respondents spend less than an hour on social media for work. Jersey was the only jurisdiction with respondents spending more than 3 hours per day on social media.
As expected, Twitter and Facebook had the highest results for use of social media for work purposes.
Sourcing stories:
CD media prefer to use personal contacts the most to source stories (100% of those surveyed prefer it), with press releases following that at 89%.
This was a marked increase from the 2014 survey when only 89% used personal contacts to source stories.
There is an increase in CD media sourcing stories from blogs. In 2014, 21% of respondents said they use blogs. Now, in 2017, 46% said they use blogs.
When broken down by jurisdiction: 79% of Jersey respondents use Facebook to source stories, that compares to 86% in Guernsey and only 33% in the IoM.
Where Twitter is concerned, 33% of journalists in Guernsey and the same proportion in the IoM said they use Twitter, compared to 90% of Jersey respondents.
Meanwhile, in Jersey, 47% of respondents said they use blogs which is the third highest social network used to source stories. 33% of Guernsey respondents said they source from blogs.
Publishing Stories:
Other than using the respective organisation’s websites, CD media surveyed said they would publish stories on Facebook (96%), Twitter (89%) and even Instagram (27%).
42% of respondents said they would publish stories only on social media
Most of the CD media surveyed said that sourcing a story through social media would not improve or make no difference to the quality of story (89%) or the reliability of the story (92%). However, 31% said that it would improve the type of story.
Engaging with PR Professionals:
An overwhelming majority of the CD media (69%) said they would prefer to interact with PR professionals via email, with the phone coming in second.
2014 saw social media come in fourth place as a preference for journalists to engage with PR professionals. The 2017 survey saw that option completely disappear as no one chose social media as a preferred option for engaging with PR professionals.
