Becoming A Social Business

I saw an interesting stat the other day. Apparently, 40% of marketing leaders feel social media spend makes a ‘below average’ contribution to company performance, while nearly 50% believe it only has an ‘average’ impact.

I saw an interesting stat the other day. Apparently, 40% of marketing leaders feel social media spend makes a ‘below average’ contribution to company performance, while nearly 50% believe it only has an ‘average’ impact. 

Yet despite this, marketers keep spending on social, with social media predicted to account for 20% of all marketing budgets over the next five years.
So, what gives? Why do we continue to spend on something that sees such small returns?

The answer, of course, lies in its potential; there’s huge value in getting closer to our customers, and social is seen as a great means of doing that. The trick lies in converting that potential into concrete results in the here and now.

Obviously increased use of – and insight from – new analytics tools will help, but
what will really help drive results in social will be embedding it more firmly into
the way the organisation operates. There’s a sense amongst the executives I’ve spoken with recently that social media is still not fully integrated into organisations’ overall business strategies. They might have a social media strategy, but aligning that with real business outcomes is still something of a pipedream for the vast majority of firms.

According to a recent study, marketers lead social media activities in 83.9% of companies. But, as marketers will be the first to argue, social media has applications far beyond just the marketing department – for instance, in recruitment, customer service, product development, etc. And as such, it needs to become much more than just a marketing responsibility. 

Research from Linkedin shows that when senior executives go social, the benefits extend to the entire organisation. Companies with a socially active C-suite are 58% more likely to attract top talent, and their employees are 24% more likely to feel innovative.

So clearly a top-down approach can’t hurt. But it can’t end there. The whole organisation needs to embrace what it means to be a social business, better understand what it is they want to achieve with social, and tie those efforts to actual business outcomes.

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