Last year, I distributed a social media survey to EarthLink's vice presidents to gauge their attitudes and knowledge of social media. This year, I modified the survey to focus on adaption and guage comfort level for transparency. We are still tabulating the results internally, but I wanted to share the template. Feel free to download the survey.
Among its questions, the survey asks participants
- to rank the importance of various new and traditional tools to reach customers
- to list the ways they use social media
- to indicate the number of hours per week they use social media
- to rate the importance of social media in their job now and in two years
- to measure their comfort level with open, transparent customer forums
The survey is intended as a tool to develop a social media communications strategy. It doesn't look at the dynamics of social media or advocate the use of any one tool over another. Nor does it offer up a roadmap for product development. It's meant to establish a baseline needed to build consensus and adoption. In looking at the results, you may find that social media is not right for your company. A company's culture, employee understanding and customer usage patterns are critical to effective implementation.
In the addition to the answers themselves, you may find the cross tabulations equally or more useful. For example:
- Look at various levels of employee adoption over the next two years (questions 4 and 5), then factor in hours of usage (question 3) with those figures
- Look at answers by department (question 13),
- Look at the survey results based on those who did and didn't answer why they don't use social media (question 7),
- Look at the survey results based on answers to whether social media should be part of an employee's job description (question 6), then factor in hours of usage (question 3)
- Look at level of support for public disclosure (questions 8, 9 and 10) with ways to disclose (question 11)
There are countless other ways to slice and dice the survey results, but hopefully these are a start to evaluate the data and understand employee motivation.
I encourage people to download the survey and submit ways to refine the survey questions.
Let me get back to you.
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