eWEEK Readers Plump For Facebook Pages

Companies hoping to use social media to interact with their customers should either opt for LinkedIn or set up a Facebook page, according to a poll of eWEEK readers.

This week’s poll asked you to tell us which social media channel you think is the most effective for organisations to interact with their customers. LinkedIn and Facebook Pages came equal top, receiving 23 percent of the vote each.

They were followed by Twitter in third place with 18 percent. More traditional forms of communication such as email campaigns and phone calls received a relatively small proportion of the vote, with just 7 percent and 5 percent respectively.

Facebook pages beat groups

Interestingly Facebook groups also only got 5 percent of the vote, confirming that fan pages have unequivocally overtaken groups as the way for companies to present and promote themselves on the world’s biggest social network.

We hope this means you will all be joining eWEEK Europe’s Facebook page, where the editorial team are busy bringing you the best stories from the site, live updates from industry events, and general banter from the news room. Of course, if Twitter or LinkedIn are more up your street, we’ve got those too.

Meanwhile, a sizeable portion of voters (18 percent) said that they do not use social media to interact with their customers at all. While it is understandable that some business managers do not consider social networking to be an appropriate way to interact with customers, it is perhaps surprising that so many are still resisting a communication channel that has gained such strong momentum over the last few years.

A report by Gartner released this week reveals that social network services could replace email for 20 percent of business users by 2014. Email giants such as Microsoft and IBM are already connecting their email apps with social networks to make contacts, calendars and tasks shareable.

Moreover, Cisco’s recent Connected World report found that stringent policies prohibiting the use of social networks in the office are causing friction between IT and the workforce. Two thirds of those surveyed by Cisco said that current IT policies do not reflect real-world demands around devices, social media and mobile working.

What do you think of BlackBerry?

In next week’s poll we will be turning back to the issue of enterprise mobility, looking specifically at perceptions of RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones. For a long time BlackBerry has been held up as the device of choice for professional people on the move. However, in the past few years, smartphones that have traditionally been viewed as consumer devices – such as the iPhone and Android handsets from HTC and Samsung – have been jostling for position in the enterprise.

The recent launch of Windows Phone 7 – an operating system designed with business users in mind – also has the potential to shake things up for RIM. Unlike its much-reviled predecessor, Windows Phone 7 has been received well within the industry and looks likely to become a credible competitor in the enterprise market.

So we want to know what you think. Does BlackBerry still rule the enterprise roost or has it had its day in the sun? Do you still think having a physical keyboard is invaluable or are touchscreens the future? Is BlackBerry email still the best service going or are competitors starting to catch up? And of you’re a manager, how important is Blackberry Enterprise Server to the security of your mobile workforce?

Vote using the poll on the left hand side of the site and add your comments to join the debate.