More than half (55%) of British organisations have integrated social media into their business processes and structure, new research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and marketing and technology agency LBi found.
While the majority of companies have made changes in the past 12 months to become more social, there is still no consensus on who should manage social media strategies within the organisation.
In large corporations, only 15% of CEOs are responsible for managing their social strategies, against 29% of CEOs in small and mid-sized firms. A total 13% of respondents said no specific person within their organisation had such responsibilities.
The survey revealed that 45% of marketing and sales teams were using social media to promote their brand but just 28% were using it to interact with consumers. Surprisingly, 34% of respondents believed no one in their company was using social media to interact with consumers or for internal purposes, with the percentage being higher at 42% in SMEs against 17% in large corporations.
The research also found that businesses were facing difficulties in measuring success of social media strategies, with 27% of respondents saying they were not aware of how it is gauged. Some companies (30%) measure key performance indicators (KPIs), others (26%) use prior campaigns as a benchmark and 17% record return on investment (ROI).
Confidence seems to be another challenge in dealing with social media, with 35% of brands feeling confident in communicating with consumers through social media, but nearly the same portion (36%) lacking that confidence.
There is still a huge opportunity for businesses to become more social but the big winners will be those investing in becoming “inherently social”, said LBi’s social business design head John Monks.