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 highlights (per cent rounded to nearest whole number):
Using social media
• Our 2014 survey found that three per cent of journalists never used social media for work; now not one respondent claimed they never use social media.
• Two-thirds of all Crown Dependency (CD) media surveyed spend more than one hour per day on social media for work purposes.
• 47 per cent of Jersey respondents and 71 per cent of Guernsey respondents spend one to two hours per day on social media; 67 per cent 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 three hours per day on social media.
• 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 per cent prefer it), with press releases following that at 89 per cent. In 2014 survey only 89 per cent used personal contacts to source stories.
• There is an increase in CD media sourcing stories from blogs. In 2014, 21 per cent of respondents said they use blogs. Now, in 2017, 46 per cent said they use blogs.
• When broken down by jurisdiction: 79 per cent of Jersey respondents use Facebook to source stories, compared with 86 per cent in Guernsey and only 33 per cent in the IoM.
• Where Twitter is concerned, 33 per cent of journalists in Guernsey and the same proportion in the IoM said they use Twitter, compared with 90 per cent of Jersey respondents.
• Meanwhile, in Jersey, 47 per cent of respondents said they use blogs, which is the third highest social network used to source stories. And 33 per cent 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 per cent), Twitter (89 per cent) and even Instagram (27 per cent).
• 42% of respondents said they would publish stories only on social media
• Most of the CD media surveyed said sourcing a story through social media would not improve or make no difference to the quality of story (89 per cent) or the reliability of the story (92 per cent). However, 31 per cent said it would improve the type of story.
Engaging with PR professionals
• An overwhelming majority of the CD media (69 per cent) said they would prefer to interact with PR professionals via email, with the phone coming in second.
• In 2014 social media came fourth as a preference for journalists to engage with PR professionals. In the 2017 survey that option completely disappeared as no one chose social media as a preferred option for engaging with PR professionals.
For more details about the survey click here