According to a survey on the utilization of the social media by Japanese business enterprises, jointly conducted by NTTCom Online Marketing Solutions and Looops Communications, Facebook was utilized by 76.8% of the surveyed the Japanese companies, followed by Twitter with 59.2% users. Blogs (50.7%) and YouTube (46.9%) following these top 2 media accounted for user ratios close to last year, on the other hand LINE with 34.8% users (9.0 points up) and Google+ with 32.9% users (7.9 points up) rose substantially to surpass 30% users.
“Branding of the corporation,” “public relations” and “campaign” are popular purposes for using social media. LINE, in addition, is used for wider range of activities including “branding of specific product or service,” “customer support” and “enhancement of O2O related measure such as attracting customers to real shops.”
On the measures for utilizing social media, Facebook and Twitter became more strongly linked to the company websites. LINE is being used as a means of interface with the consumers. “Constructive interchange with the users,” “holding actual events” and “monitoring user postings concerning the company” were some of the activities LINE is used for.
Many companies selected “entertainment information,” “discount/limited-time sale/bargain information” and “practical/efficient information (articles by specialists)” as SNS contents effective for business. They claim that they obtain know-how on making those contents not only simple introductions but also measures to entertain users, specialize the real time basis feature and utilize opinions of customers.
The budget related to SNS is generally on the increase. This is true compared with the SNS budged from last year, but also compared with the budget spent on mass media ads or other product listing ads. In particular, 39.5% of the companies with over 1,000 employees increased the SNS budged from last year.
The research was conducted in June 2014 targeted at persons in charge of the companies which possess official SNS accounts and collected 414 valid responses.
From the Survey on the Utilization of the Social Media by Japanese Business Enterprises(Travel Voice Editorial Department)
