DISQUS

Russell · 11 months ago

Excellent work here. I'd also like to see data on social media inside the firewall, i.e. as part of employee engagement and internal comms. Be interesting to see how the data might compare.

Donny Gamble · 11 months ago

The facts prove that if you aren't doing any form of social marketing, that you are losing out on a lot of potential clients and customers for your business

Dave Kerpen · 11 months ago

I am very optimisitc for '09. Even with advertising budgets being cut, social media marketing is so much more than advertising, as evidenced by this incredible survey.

Every marketer out there wants "to be talked about", whether it's your company, client, product or service. Social media allows just that, on as a great a scale as you'll allow it.

Rajiv Dingra · 11 months ago

I think social media can be used for marketing which is beyond just customers.. It can be used to attract and engage any target audience. Be it suppliers or VC's for startups, Hires for recruitments and so on. It fairly broader than just a marketing or a branding tool which its used for today.

Janelle · 11 months ago

You have hit the nail on the head here. Social media offers almost infinate potential in reaching target audiences. The problem is, apart from the technophobic aspect, that clients want something directly measurable like a folder of press cuttings and reader circulations- I think sometimes this becomes the focus rather than the actual results of a campaign. Priorities!

Adam · 11 months ago

I'm not entirely sure how "low-cost" social media marketing really is. I think it appears a lot cheaper than it actually is - because there are no clear cut dollar costs - e.g. $10/cpm for a banner - we think we're not paying for anything with social media. But, in reality, to do "social media" correctly requires significant attention from at least one or two people in the organization. That time/attention is not free (there are costs, opportunity and otherwise, to that).

I'm not saying "social media" isn't worth it (there are enormous benefits discussed above) but I think it would behoove people in "social media" to be more realistic about the nature of the spend. Organizations, big and small, need to be convinced of the merit of social media in context of a more honest appreciation of the costs involved. Only this will put social media on a firm long-term footing in marketing/messaging budgets.

Glen Evans · 3 months ago

Good point, time is an asset we all possess in limited quantity!

deb lavoy · 11 months ago

I'd like to know what people think "customer engagement" really means and what
the perceived benefit is. Do people really see this as forming relationships with
users? Do they see the benefit of customers who are aware of and in communication
or even community with others? Do they see that engaged customers are supportive
and engaged companies are too?

or, you know, is it just a buzz word.

Alan Edgett · 11 months ago

Honestly, are we kidding here? We take a survey of what Marketers "think" they get from SM Marketing and then cite that as proof that they are and that it is worthwhile? Where is the measurement of the customers? Where is the actual data relative to time spent and money spent (as with other forms). This is the type of amateur marketing hype that drives me nuts. I'm with Deb on this one...where is the proof?

Says the Social Media/Emerging media guy from a large co!

Alan

Rony Mirzaians · 11 months ago

Having helped several companies establish a presence in Social Media I can say
that its a solution that has many many upsides provided the client is willing
to stay engaged, invest some time, and understand that results are not going
to happen overnight in most cases.

This graph does fall in line with what my clients look for in our Social Media
marketing services.

Great Job Adam!

jason · 11 months ago

yeah, i'd like to know too.

from a DR marketing standpoint i don't see any benefit in social media.

Jessica Routier, IAC · 11 months ago

Great post! It's always interesting to see actual statistic to back up what everyone is saying.

Also, a comment on Russell's comment (#1): I must say that, everyone in our organization, which is mostly virtual, was encouraged to get on Twitter. A lot of us didn't even know what Twitter was. After using Twitter, however, we found that we all felt like we were actually getting to know our co-workers (most of whom we have never met in person) a lot better!!

Thanks Twitter! :)

Russell · 11 months ago

that's interesting Jessica. And of course apps like Twitter cross both internal and corp comms, plus the firewall. The big headache though is infosec issues - did you have any security or confidentiality issues raised?

jeff · 11 months ago

Social Media Marketing is proving to be an efficient and cost effective means of connecting with clients and potential buyers of products. What I'd like to see is the break down of companies that responded to see if they were using SMM Social Media Marketing for B2B or B2C marketing and which was more effective. Also this doesn't take in to consideration a companies use of SMM to locate identify and screen potential employment candidates. My understanding is that SMM is being used more for recruiting purposes rather than Sales and Marketing purposes.
Take Linkedin for example a good case could be argued that the Linkedin network as a whole was greatly influenced by the open networking efforts of recruiters who saw great benefit in the profile format offered on Linkedin so they spread the word.

Jessica Routier, IACEZ · 11 months ago

Russell, none yet that I know of!! We've been on Twitter within the company for about 3-4 months now.

Adam Ostrow · 11 months ago

@Deb, Alan, Ernesto ... agree that coming from marketers, it's not necessarily the most compelling data, but it does at least give people an idea of what your peers are using to make the case for smm. We'll certainly post some studies and analysis of actual customers as we come across them :)

Cheri Sigmon, CISSP · 11 months ago

Hello! As Russell states above, "infosec issues - did you have any security or confidentiality issues raised?" - I'd be VERY interested to know the answer as an InfoSec professional. We have common issues of "information sharing vs. information assurance" - that is, what information can be shared (in the Web 2.0 world especially) vs. what must be protected. Thanks for this post, folks.

@CheriSigmon

Easton Ellsworth, TechStartups · 11 months ago

I own a blog consulting business and have had the opportunity to help several companies use social media marketing to get better results. Customer engagement is usually the number one reason by far to engage in it for my clients. Lead generation is another big part of it.

Thanks for sharing these data.

meznor · 11 months ago

Jonathan Trenn: "The 51% that view as social media being low cost means that 49% see the opposite. Combine that with the 21.2 that see social media as good for lead generation, and you’ve got major problems when applying that to company strategies during a recession when immediate and/or measurable ROI is paramount."

Great point. An additional layer of apprehension exists with any communications person working in the public sector. Social media is not suitable for every organization, especially when the organization has a long way to go before it embraces an “open” culture after being closed for so long. If you repeated this survey and asked managers and directors in my workplace, you’d get drastically different results, I’d imagine.

But it’s always good to survey perceptions of industry people to see where communications and marketing strategies are headed. It’d be great if you could expand this study, Adam!

ryan · 11 months ago

Could anyone maybe cite examples (or provide a link) of companies big or small
who have benefited (revenue, lead-wise) from social media marketing, and the
tactics they used? I would love to present great case studies if I'm trying to
sell a client on this tactic.

Alma Gray · 11 months ago

As I see it, social media can be another tool/channel for marketing communications. It is not as blatant/interruptive as traditional marketing communications channels go, and that is important to remember. Non profits have been using it as a tool for decades, it is in the last decade that for profit marketers have begun using it thus increasing its popularity in the marketing industry. It is also important to remember when using it in marketing it must be researched, planned and measured, otherwise the work and money involved goes to waste.

Jag · 11 months ago

Social Media is going to be the next mall marketplace. example. One needs robots
would go to robot social media group. And there will be a all the sellers
one needs to find to purchase robots......http://housedna.com/marketplace.aspx

Samantha · 11 months ago

Agree with poster questioning the relative cost efficiency of social media-- it's not a cheap CPC media, and as branding vehicle jury seems to be out. What is cheap about it?

Janak Mehta · 11 months ago

You are right on money here. Social Media Marketing is certainly a must have
for all big corporation for 2009. This is probably very effective way to engage
clients, improve brand and mainly monitor any noise or negative talk about
them. Michigan businesses can join the bandwagon at http://www.SocialMediaMI.com

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Nalin · 5 months ago

hey very good articles. keep sharing.

Deborah Johnson · 5 months ago

Social Media Marketing will produce little overall results until we learn to engage our audience at a specific moment, and that moment is when our content is relevant to them!! And until we as a whole understand that keywords, proximity searching, and the like produce largely inaccurate insight we'll continue to struggle.

All these companies talking about doing brand monitoring; I would be
interested to know what the technology behind the solution is. For example,
for brand monitoring, conversation monitoring and analysis to be remotely
accurate the technology used must be able to do several things: (1)
understanding word meaning (think of a Semantic Map as a giant dictionary),
(2) ability to disambiguate word meanings within the context of how they are
used; and (3) have an understanding of synonymy.

MBAinData · 5 months ago

DJ- you hit it.

ChrisStigson · 3 months ago

Social media is like the totally new way to level the playing field with big corporations.F Finally the people are creating the news, and sharing what's important. The "voice of the people" is finally taking over, and creating more control :) I like that about social media! It also helps attract a lot of leads into my business through the power of video and networking, so that's great too!

joel · 3 months ago

Awesome article Adam.Many forward-thinking companies are investing in social media because they understand that there are many benefits to doing so.Social media is important because it improves a company’s relationships with their customers, increases sales, increases media coverage, reduces customer service costs, improves relationships with customers, and improves the recruiting process.
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