A new survey commissioned by Regus indicates that 40% of businesses in Ireland have used social networks as a way to win new business. The survey showed that over 40% of Irish companies plan to allocate a proportion of their marketing budget to social networking activities by the end of this year.

The most popular function of social networking as a marketing tool was cited as keeping in touch with contacts. Keeping in contact with potential customers through social networking has helped these firms to successfully acquire new customers. The results of this survey indicate that firms who have yet to enter the social networking space could be missing out on considerable amounts of new business opportunities.