Philippine firms beat global peers in social media usage

The Philippines, earlier cited as one of the most tech-savvy countries in Asia, has beaten the global average in terms of the proportion of businesses that use social media as a means to market their products and boost revenues.

This is according to the results of the latest survey by Grant Thornton showing that 44 percent of enterprises in the country use social media—one of which is the social networking site Facebook—to improve profitability.

This figure is slightly higher than the global average of 43 percent, although slightly lower than the average of 45 percent for the Asean region.

Punongbayan & Araullo, a member of the Grant Thornton group, said that the proportion of Philippine businesses that use social media is expected to grow over the short term given the popularity of social media sites among Filipinos.

P&A said this popularity is aided by the significant number of Filipinos working offshore and who use social media to communicate with their families in the Philippines.

“Filipino businesses in particular have more of an incentive to use social media because of the large number of overseas Filipino workers that are all over the globe.

These online tools are probably the most efficient way to cover such a diffused market— they’re borderless and a business can get a campaign going at zero to minimum cost,” Marivic Españo, P&A managing partner and chief executive officer, said in a report on the survey released yesterday.

The Philippines is the fourth-biggest exporter of labor in the world, next to China, India and Mexico. There are about 10 million Filipinos working abroad.

Businesses in the Philippines that use social media use it mainly for advertising and for communicating with their customers. Other uses are for communicating with suppliers, communication with staff and recruitment.