One of the areas that will continue to grow this year is corporate use of social media. I know – big, bold prediction on my part. In any event, it was because of this that I read the recent release of data from Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions. You can read the study called “Structuring A Social Media Team” here. The research asked a couple of thousand respondents about how their company uses social media and how they’re structured to support those efforts. The results are not particularly surprising. In fact, I find them a bit alarming. Let’s see what you think.
- Sixty-five percent of respondents do social media on top of their other duties. For those who do social media exclusively, nearly eighty-three percent work on teams of three or fewer.
- Sixty-nine percent are dissatisfied or only “somewhat satisfied” with how they measure social media. Only thirty-one percent are satisfied or very satisfied. And many say they lack the time to track data or aren’t even sure what to measure.
- Only thirteen percent describe their efforts as advanced. Slightly more than half agreed with the statement, “We keep our heads above water, but not by much.”
- “Ownership” of social media is murky, and the question may even become passé as numerous departments within organizations jump in.
So most organizations don’t have an employee who focuses exclusively on social media. It appears from the data that it’s an added responsibility for someone who is assisted by interns. While as a manager I understand the “efficiency” of this, I’m not sure I’d trust what is becoming my organizations public face to someone who is doing it as an afterthought. Think about some of the social media disasters we’ve seen – how often is an intern involved? The fact that marketing, PR, and other departments all lay claim to a piece of these efforts makes it a difficult task to get goals clearly defined too.
I’m not quite sure what to say about the lack of measurement I don’t believe in doing anything in business without some method of accountability and not having any idea about what to track much less how to track it is disturbing. Only thirty-one percent of firms report measuring sales while everyone else seems focused on “likes” and followers – a measure of quantity, not necessarily quality or response. the lack of time and/or manpower is also cited (by nearly 2/3) as the main reasons why there isn’t more and better measurement.
It’s a pretty comprehensive study and if you use social media for business you might give it a read. Then hit the comments to let us know what you think.
Consult Keith 