New figures show Irish enterprises are the second highest users of social media in the European Union.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) says 69% of Irish businesses, which employ 10 people or more, used some type of social media in 2017.

This includes platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

This is compared with an EU average of just 47%.

The use of social media by businesses nationally has risen from 64% in 2015 and 67% in 2016.

In terms of businesses using social media, Ireland ranked joint-second in the EU-28.

Malta had the largest percentage of usage at 74%, while Poland had the lowest usage at just 27%.

The CSO says the primary method of using social media as a way of connecting with customers is the use of social networks - with 67% of Irish enterprises stating they used social networks such as Facebook.

This compares with 65% and 62% of Irish firms using social networks in 2016 and 2015 respectively.

Comparable data from Eurostat shows that the use of social networks by EU-28 enterprises increased from 36% in 2015 to 42% in 2016 and 45% in 2017.

Irish businesses maintained a relatively stable use of blogs or microblogs - such as Twitter - with 32% using this method in 2017 compared with 33% in 2016 and 30% in 2015.

The use of multimedia content sharing websites, such as YouTube, increased from 21% in 2015 to 23% in 2017.