Never before has the term 'theatre of public opinion' been so applicable - with the growth of social media, companies are constantly in the spotlight. Twitter, Facebook and other platforms have changed the way that businesses communicate, market their brand messages and engage with their consumers - this is old hat now, we are already (or should be) socially aware!
Download The State of Corporate Social Media in 2011
It's common to see brands with hundreds of thousands of followers and friends - clearly the chance for interaction has never been greater. Yet in a recent Twitter survey, 53% of corporate accounts did
not 'humanise' their brand, 68% had less than 1,000 followers, and 15% were completely inactive - hardly an example of social media best practice!
Social media has many powers - to engage, alienate, create mistrust and make us customers for life who will continue to be brand ambassadors for as long as companies value our relationship. A pretty
empowering marketing tool then......and therefore it's rather unsurprising that corporate take-up
has been so significant!
79 out of the Fortune 100 are using social media as major channel for their marketing and
communications
88% of surveyed US companies say that their budget will increase for social media in 2011
But is there more to come from corporate social media adoption? Will 2011 show us new, innovative ways companies can leverage its power to improve their business? Will brands continue to take social media seriously?
In my opinion the answer to all of the above questions is an emphatic 'yes' - and I would expect you share that view. It's a view backed up by a recent survey carried out by the team here at Useful
Social Media. Of US companies surveyed in 2011, 100% said that they were placing an increasing importance on social media as a marketing tool.
And social media as simply a marketing tool is only the start. The survey results indicate 2011 will be an interesting year! Although we can't predict the future, we have been able to make some
educated guesses on how corporate social media will change and evolve over the next twelve months.
We've included a few examples below to demonstrate some of the interest findings around staffing issues surrounding social media use. When the respondents were asked how big their social media
team was, the responses came back surprisingly low. Based on this, over 75% of organizations have under three people exclusively working on their social media initiatives. (see below)
Another interesting finding was the analysis of social media budgets for 2011. It appears as thosebudgets for social media initiatives are poised to increase, demonstrating social media's growing importance and impact on big business.
The briefing written about our survey results is called 'The State of Corporate Social Media in 2011'.Our aim in producing the document was to put together solid facts and statistics on corporate socialmedia adoption; along with information on how this adoption will evolve. The briefing covers:
- How large business organises social media expertise within their organisation
- Current and predicted budget levels for social media
- The development from social media as a marketing tool to its broader role within business
- An investigation into the differences in corporate social media between Europe and the USA
To get your copy of the briefing click here.
Thanks to Will from usefulsocialmedia.com for this guest post and great stats. Check their site forfurther insight and data.