Accountants 'engaged with social media'

Although it has been suggested in the past that professionals services workers such as accountants are lagging behind when it comes to the adoption of social media, a new report has cast doubt on this premise.

The latest Wolters Kluwer Social Media Survey, which sampled the views of 1,100 accountants at the end of 2013, found 77 per cent of respondents to be utilising some form of social platform in their professional life.

This is a small increase compared to 2012, but a jump of ten per cent from the survey carried out in 2011.

Over a third of respondents visited social media sites at least once a day, while 27 per cent did so several times. One factor in this could be the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets - two-thirds of accountants had accessed Twitter or Facebook via their phone over the course of the year.

CCH Software managing director Simon Crompton said: "Social media is now an established part of the business landscape. You may not use it extensively in either your private or professional lives - in fact you may not currently use it at all - but a lot of people do, including probably many clients and potential clients of accountants."

Sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter are proving increasingly important in the B2B and B2C landscape, with some consumers perceiving social media as more trustworthy than traditional marketing channels.

However, this depends to some extent on which platform is used - according to Wolters Kluwer, LinkedIn remains the most popular in the professional services sector, with over 13 million UK users.

Some 67 per cent of social media users in accountancy admitted to using the platform as part of their professional life. On the other hand, only ten per cent of respondents ever made use of blogs, while Google+ - still a relatively new site - is ignored by 74 per cent of accountants.