state of social media marketing | Tom Humbarger's Social Media Musings

The Altimeter Group recently pulled together data from four years of surveying digital strategists and have published the findings in a report The State of Social Business 2013.

The top findings include:

Only 17% of companies have self-described themselves as “strategic” in the execution of their social strategies.
78% of companies have a dedicated social media team, at the division, corporate or both levels — only 22% of companies do not have a dedicated team.
Companies are committing more headcount to social media across all sizes of organizations.
85% of companies have an organizational social media policy, yet only 18% of companies report that their employees’ knowledge of social media usage and the organizational policy is either good or very good.

The full report and Powerpoint slides are presented below.

Awareness, makers of social media software, released their 38-page 2012 State of Social Media Marketing report this week. The report is based on surveys from over 320 marketers from a cross section of industries, company sizes and social media experience.

The three key watchwords from the report are presence, frequency and processes. Other priorities include more robust social media management, more social media presence and mobile.

Awareness - Key Findings from State of Social Media Marketing

Key Findings from the 2012 State of Social Media Marketing Report by Awareness

The key challenges reported by marketers was funding (and finding) the resources necessary and measuring returns on the social media investments. This is great news for social media practictioners who have experience in creating and curating content, and for experts in measuring and analyzing social media returns and performance. There are still too few of these experienced resources who have hands-on expertise in working across multiple industries and situations.

As far as budgets are concerned, companies with limited money to spend will focus on increasing presence across social media networks. Companies with moderate budgets are planning on investing in social media monitoring platforms while companies with larger budgets will spend their money on social media management tools and developing scalable processes.

You can download your own copy of the report from this landing page or view the embedded Slideshare version below (courtesy of Elizabeth Lupfer of The Social Workplace).

More about Awareness can be found at these links:

Tom Humbarger's Social Media Musings

A blog by Tom Humbarger about social media, digital marketing and community