Interesting research about social media is always helpful in building the business case, and MDG Advertising have helpfully published a useful infographic in support of this (see end of blog).
The key takeouts from this are:
- Around three-quarters of businesses are now using social networking for business objectives and almost two-thirds are incorporating social media into their marketing plans.
- Almost all Chief Marketing Officers are looking beyond sales goals and web metrics to identify the value of social marketing efforts. Three-quarters believe they will link these efforts to hard ROI data this year.
- The metrics used are progressing well beyond ‘clicks’; among the top measures being used to evaluate social media ROI are web traffic, conversion, numbers of ‘fans’, numbers of positive mentions by customers, number of contributors, number of page views and mentions.
- Perceived benefits of social media involvement include closing business, forging new partnerships and improvements in search engine rankings among those investing a minimum of 6 hours a week on social media marketing. Facebook is seen to be the most valuable marketing platform currently, although YouTube is the platform where businesses plan to increase their activity the most.
- Four in five businesses are now using social media to recruit new employees, and say this strategy has been successful for them. Consequently, businesses plan to increase their recruitment spend in social media by 55% this year.
- The key social media objectives for businesses are engaging existing customers, encouraging word of mouth, building brand awareness, complementing a promotional campaign, increasing sales, increasing searchability and spreading news about a business.
Clearly, the social media objectives for an individual business will depend on that business’s overall objectives and marketing plans, but are essential to clarify in advance, in order to know what’s being measured and what success actually looks like.
+++ Feel free to contact me karen@karenwisdom.co.uk to discuss which measures would be most relevant to your business and/or for guidance and support in how to manage your business’s social media activity +++
Infographic by MDG Advertising
