Current corporate social media adoption, attitudinal orientation towards social media & social media’s potential to meet business objectives.
These are the three key themes covered in the latest research from TNS / Cymfony titled “Harnessing influence: how savvy brands are unleashing the power of social media”. I’d encourage you to read the full report, but there were a number of points that caught my attention.
1 - Corporate social media adoption
39.4% of respondents declared themselves to be at the pilot / experimentation stage, with 23.9% at a more advanced stage of integration revealing they ‘regularly’ include social media in their marketing & PR campaigns. Fine, but perhaps more revealing are the reasons cited as ‘barriers-to-acceptance’. Here, the top three were lack of ‘C’-level executive buy-in (18.3%), not having the necessary skills (16.9%) and not believing there are best practices and proven models of operation (16.9%). Irrespective of whether viable marketing or communications aims can be established we still find ourselves needing to consider education, training and implementation approaches as key components of any social media strategy even before anyone actually starts talking to customers.
2 - Attitudinal orientation towards social media
The report divides respondents into two: the ‘Wait-and-See’ and the ‘Revolutionary’ groups. No prizes for guessing the general attitudes involved, with the ‘Wait-and-See’ group seeing social media as just another channel; underpinned by traditional mass-marketing techniques. Alternatively, the ‘Revolutionaries’ not only believed that social media should be “grasped with a sense of urgency” but they saw it as more important to listen (to derive insight and then act iteratively) than just to use it as a means to ‘push’ additional messages.
However, a higher level assessment of attitudes asked respondents to rate their perception of the likely significance of social media in 5 years time. 56% indicated it would be “very significant”. This does beg the question, why do the other 44% think it won’t be of such importance? Are there commonalities within their belief? What is specific to this attitude (commercial sector, means of doing business, customer technographics)? Just what is their future ‘worldview’ of technological interaction & its relation to their business in 2013?
3 - Social media’s potential to meet business objectives
36.6% - the highest number - indicated that “generating customer insights” was the objective social media had the greatest potential to address with brand awareness (21.1%) and increasing customer loyalty (18.3%) coming 2nd & 3rd. However, what did intrigue me was the number of respondents who believed it was suited for “increasing purchase intent”: 0%. So, none of the respondents or companies believe social media can drive sales? Given the amount of commentary on the role of influence and advocacy in this area this seems a little strange.
I’d also reference a report issued by David Rabjohns of strategic planning consultancy Motivequest. Commenting on the outcomes of their social media campaign for Mini, Rabjohns cites “… that shifts in advocacy accounted for 53% of the change in sales.” I’ve no reason to doubt this but what does it say about the real accuracy of the 0% figure above? Was everyone just being polite?
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[...] trying to bulwark a levee with scotch tape. True understanding begins by taking a step back and looking at the big picture. Social media is that different and requires a unique strategic [...]
The Hard Pill » The Buzz Bin added these pithy words on Apr 04 08 at 7:52 am