Nine out of ten (88%) brands rate social media as important to their business, according to new research from the UK Internet Advertising Bureau’s Social Media Council.
The study found that social media will be getting greater budget allocation this year, with driving brand awareness and brand consideration amongst the most popular uses of social media.
A third of advertisers said they planned to allocate between 6% and 20% of their digital marketing budgets on social media in 2010, compared with just 14% in 2009.
The study, which was conducted amongst 80 senior marketers, found that only 7% of respondents haven’t yet embraced social media in any way, with 22% having made it a core part of their communications strategy, 20% feeding it into most campaigns, 23.5% using social media in ad hoc projects and 27% having tested it with a view to using again.
Who owns social media in a business?
When it came to who was best placed to managed social media activities, the survey found that responsibility for social media within client organisations spans a number of departments, suggesting a need for ‘social media teams’ representing a range of different skillsets. Whilst three quarters (73%) of respondents stated that social media belonged within the marketing department, it was also found to be the responsibility of PR (33%), research (12%) customer services (16%) and IT teams (7%).
Challenges – ROI and measurement
Unsurprisingly, 74% of respondents believed that proving ROI was the biggest challenge for the social media industry, whilst 64% saw measurement as the most significant hurdle, and over half (57%) stating that more education of how best to use it is required.
Simon Rutherford, who until recently was Head of Digital at Toyota, and is in the process of establishing a Social Media agency said “Social Media has the potential to confuse organisations, because it requires a mix of skills which have traditionally been exclusively contained within departments. For example, whilst Marketing might manage Research, and the development of Content, PR might understand how to handle misinformation about their Company and Products.”
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