Engineers and Manufacturing Professionals Are Using Social Media

According to GlobalSpec’s social media survey of engineers, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals, usage of social media varies by platform.

• 42% have a Facebook account, although it is not used much for work-related purposes.
• 32% have a LinkedIn account
• 82% of those belonging to at least one group in LinkedIn.
• 12% of individuals have a Twitter account
• 9% of companies have a Twitter account

Of those that do use social media, the majority of users are passive: they are much more likely to read and watch content than to actively participate by creating content such as commenting or posting.

Why is it going to be very hard to get a handle on what’s going to happen? Well, in short, because small business and individual people are difficult to predict when it comes to Herd Mentality. (remember the Nietzsche stuff you read in college?)

Let’s not forget that in the metalcutting sector of manufacturing it’s primarily made up of small business and they are adopting Social Media pretty quickly. Everywhere you turn you’re now seeing “Follow us on….Twitter, Facebook, Youtube” so the thinking seems to be “Well, I better get on here and do it”. Coming out of 2009 the manufacturing sector is grasping at ANY way to make money.

The reality is you can set up all three sites for free and have a pretty decent looking presence on each in about 2 hours. Yes, that’s right, all three of them in under 2 hours time and yes, it’s FREE.

​Many of them are probably holding back and evaluating the usefulness of social media platforms, which means that suppliers who engage in social media must, above all else, be useful and relevant to their audience in order to build a network of followers.