A recent global 2013 Q3 report by Altimeter Group indicates that social media is extending deeper into organizations and strategies are maturing. What was previously a series of initiatives driven by marketing and PR, is now evolving into a social business movement that looks to scale and integrate social across the organization. The report, further, looks into how businesses are expanding their social media efforts and resource investment.
Below are the highlights of the report:
- In terms of social business maturity, most organizations are “intermediate,” with only 17% who are truly strategic in the execution of their social strategies.
- The lack of clear leadership, organization, and strategy means that many organizations experience some form of “social anarchy,” of silo’ed, uncoordinated social efforts.
- More companies are adapting organizational-inclusive models to organize their social business programs
- Most dedicated social media teams continue to report to Marketing (40%) or Corporate Communications/PR (26%). But now, 13 different departments around the organization are seeing dedicated staff work on social initiatives.
- Companies are committing more headcount to social media across all sizes of companies. The biggest jump is for companies with more than 100,000 employees, which now report an average of 49 full-time employees (FTEs) supporting social media in the organization, compared to 20 in 2010.
- Top priorities for social include scaling for engagement, integrating data, and training/education around social.
- Measuring the impact of social is maturing, with over half of organizations able to track the impact of social on marketing efforts.
- Lack of employee training around social media policies remains a significant risk area — only 18% of companies said that their employees have a good or very good understanding of their social media policies.
