State of Social 2010

8/8/2019 State of Social 2010

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EST A T E O F SOC

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I N C O R P O R A T I N G T H E E C O N S U L T A N C Y / B I G M O U T H M E D I A S O C I A L M E D I A S U R V E Y 2 0 1 0

SOCIAL MED IA S U R V E Y 2 0 10


2/16

Social media isnt even about marketing planners ticking a box

next to an RFP for a strategic display or search campaign and

ordering up a viral video.

Bother, Im barely one paragraph into this introduction to our

social media and online PR research and Ive used the word viral

already. Its a loaded word and causes all sorts of trouble.

Let me be clear; if someone is trying to sell you a viral then

theyre trying to sell you a promise. Nothing is born viral. A witty

video has the potential to go viral - I would describe it as a viral

candidate - and social media is the channel that decides

whether or not the candidate reaches its potential or not.

Social media is about people interacting online. Social media is

about people talking, sharing, making recommendations,

making observations, and about people going online to be

entertained. This is why social media can be so powerful but alsoso difficult to treat as a marketing opportunity.

I think social media may be everything because it wraps

everything we do online. It should also therefore wrap around all

our online marketing activities. Ive talked to a lot of brands

about social media and their marketing activities. Theres a

common debate held by many marketing departments that is

entirely flawed: you dont decide whether you want to do social

media. Social media happens to you. The challenge brands face

is how theyre going to cope with this rapidly evolving new

world. How much money? How much time?

Venturing on to Twitter, for example, opens up a host of

customer relationship management issues. Not being on Twitter

leaves brands open to further cries of dissent - cries that might

sound out on blogs and start to rank on Google rather than

vanish quickly in Twitters archives alongside hundreds of

thousands of other tweets from that day.

Once engaged in social media, brands tend to face the challenge

of proving that their time is being spent wisely. This isnt always

the case. Some progressive, and lucky, companies are able to

commit to the importance of social media - perhaps as part of a

CRM issue - without having to mutter darkly of acronyms like

ROI or CTR.

Andrew GirdwoodMedia Innovations Director, bigmouthmedia

The heart of social media is aboutbuilding relationships. Relationships

are at the heart of absolutely everything

we do online. Social media is not about

building websites or widgets.

2

I thinksocial mediamay be everythingAn exclusive article by Andrew Girdwood


3/16

1 Listening Research is really the key and the starting point

to find out who is talking about your brand and where they are.This is done by using a number of listening tools and an added

layer of focus groups to gather attitudinal and anecdotal evidence.

These techniques identify the behaviour and output of your audience

and then allow you to meld and test your insights with them.

2 StrategyBy reviewing and analysing learnings, acoherent picture will start appear and allow you to create a useful

strategy. There will be some signposts to take note of. Perhaps you

have found customers who ask for help on Twitter, there may be

communities on facebook which have been set up or forums and

boards with ongoing conversations - and you may be lucky enough

to discover some great brand advocates who have influential blogs.

3Branded channel creation You may find youraudiences clustered around a number of social media channels

which it uses and that it is influenced by some key players in social

media. Now is the time to invest in building branded channels and

this could mean a Facebook page or a blog hub.

4Content & credibility The Listening and Strategypieces will inform the tone and style of content which needs to be

developed and this can be an exciting departure from the

directional messaging of pure play advertising.

5Community acquisition There are a number of

routes which assist in building a strong and engaged social mediacommunity. Financial investment in Facebook engagement can

accelerate the growth of a fan page and this has to be incentivised

as people need a reason to get involved. Beneath this sits a strategic

framework of earned credibility which takes time. Social media

partnerships are a great entree into this.

6Reputation and monetisation The longterm goals for a brand in social media are to gain insights and

understanding which are useful to the business process and strategy.

The need to maintain a robust and credible reputation and open

up new channels of revenue are very much part of the mix. The

next logical step is continue with the listening efforts and draw up

a reactive response strategy and then to add in measurement and

tracking tools to capture the results of your efforts.

Things change rapidly in social media and many of the barriers to

entry are dissolving. The uncomfortable feelings of fear and

paranoia at a corporate level have been replaced by openness and

transparency, even to the point that companies have changed their

language from the formal to the vernacular. Theres also a new

layer of skill required as social media becomes a stand alone

marketing discipline in which everyone is a stakeholder. This skill is

by definition a new wave of empathy which runs happily alongside

the traditional advertising-led directional messaging which has

dominated brand culture for so long and may soon eclipse it.

Eva KeoganHead of Social Media, LBi

By 2007 there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world (including

1456 in the U.S.) selling 395 million copies a day (55 million in the

U.S). That same year blog search engine Technorati was tracking

more than 112,000,000 blogs. The latest figures from Facebook lay

claim to 500 million active users, and 25 million are in the UK.

Added to these stunning figures is the fact that people are

watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading

hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24

hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Twitter recently

published a post on its blog claiming it has 100 million users.

How can brands harness the potential of social media and make

sense of this vast array of information?

To begin with, this complex and varied collection of conversations

and discussions, which are sometimes referred to as the virtual

watercooler, has people at the heart of them.

While theres no rule book for social media, there are

some key stepswhich can help you formulate a strategyand implementation plan.

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6of

social media

Making sense of this new

and dynamic environment

An exclusive article by Eva Keogan


4/16

A lot has happened since we sponsored the very first Social Media and

Online PR report with Econsultancy in 2009. The channels emergence as

one of the most keenly discussed marketing mediums in business today

has continued apace, and as we launch the 2010 report were proud that it

is now fulfilling an important role helping businesses to track a complex,

rapidly changing and increasingly important promotional conduit.

24

Social Media

Survey2010

Welcome to the Econsultancy

[in conjunction withbigmouthmedia]


5/16

Channel consolidation: winning channels, like Facebook and

Twitter, are emerging, with marketers beginning to focus

their efforts on them while disregarding minority platforms

Senior executive attention is high, with 41% of senior

management more interested in social media issues than

other marketing issues

High expectations and big plans, with 83% of companies

expecting further social media budget increases in the

coming 12 months

Resourcing poor, with 29% of firms not dedicating any

employees to social media

Claims from 49% of companies that a lack of resources is

preventing progress

Some 42% of companies are still failing to measure ROI on

any of their social spend

These results confirm the bifurcated approach to the channel

that we have observed developing over the past 12 months.

While on one hand clients ready to wholeheartedly embrace

social media are demanding innovative, challenging and radical

strategies, other operations are requesting a more judicious,

pilot-led approach. At bigmouthmedia our expert team has

been able to deliver positive results from both approaches.

If youd like to see a video presentation of the results, or an

exclusive infographic, then go to our websitehttp://bit.ly/8ZV6k1

The report starts here, we hope you enjoy it

The overall report card reveals that while

clear evidence exists to show that the sector

is maturing, there is still some distance to

go before commerce can claim to be

maximising the opportunities presented by

this increasingly profitable new channel.

5

Evidence of a maturing industry...

...but still a long way to go

T HE S T A T E OF SOCIAL

Social Media Survey 2010continued


6/16

Another key area for potential growth is in the planning and

implementation of international social media campaigns. While the

channels global nature would seem to lend itself to such

strategies, a massive 74% of companies report that they do not as

yet run them, indicating a key opportunity for the years ahead.

In line with a year in which social media has become one of the

hottest buzzwords in the world of marketing, some 73% of

companies say that they currently spend more resources on

social media than they did last year, with only 3% of businesses

having decreased their spend since 2009.

Yet despite across the board increases, our results show that

todays spending on social media marketing represents just the tip

of the iceberg. With only 18% of respondents currently

categorising themselves as being heavily involved in the space, a

mammoth 83% of companies are expecting to increase theirbudget for the channel over the next 12 months.

Such optimistic figures reflect the increasing standing social media

enjoys amongst senior executives. Some 41% of companies claim

that their CxO community gives the channel high attention, with

only 21% believing it is given less attention than other marketing

issues.

26

moremoremore

How interested in social media is your organisationsmost senior management (c-level executives)?

Given the levels of broad industry excitement that have surrounded social

media for the past 12 months, it will surprise no one to discover that the overall

picture surrounding the channel is one of ongoing growth and opportunity.



7/16

Needsbetter

Limited outreach : Identifying and engaging key influencersseems a particular sore spot. With less company news being

distributed using online press releases and traditional online media

relations, this seems likely to be a major growth area next year.

Dismal integration: Despite the proven benefits ofrunning integrated, cross platform campaigns, a mere 7% of

companies integrate their social media channel with their television

advertising. Bearing in mind the ROI synergy upsides of TV-social

media integration this is a massive and pressing

opportunity for CMOs.

While the sector has matured over the course of the last 12 months,

there is still massive room for improvement. Broadly speaking

companies and their agencies remain self-critical about their social

media tactics, with most acknowledging that they need to improve

their approaches to the channel across the board.

Amidst broad acceptance that the majority of businesses remain

some distance from maximising the potential benefits of the

channel, several key questions surrounding corporate social media

tactics demand greater scrutiny:

Missed opportunities : Some 19% of companies dontuse Facebook at all, while 71% of respondents do not use the

platform for reacting to customer service issues and inquiries.

Unheeded feedback: There are still a number of brands(46%) that dont systematically listen to or monitor what is being

said about them in social media; 33% dont share comments /

insights picked up from social media internally.

7

How well does your organisation cover the followingareas of social media & online PR?

to do




8/16

This lack of commitment surfaces again in terms of budget, 61%

of companies are spending a miniscule amount (nothing or less

than 5,000) on the channel. With so little being spent, its perhaps

unsurprising that few place much emphasis on measurement,

with 65% unable to quote a ROI for their social media spend.

A question remains as to whether low spend is driving lack of

ROI or whether lack of ROI is in fact responsible for driving low

spending levels. Until such issues over tracking and measurement

are solved, they will remain a barrier to wholesale take up.

While all indications suggest that business is rapidly

embracing social media there remains a dual approach, with

some companies enthusiastically taking up the channel and

investing while others seem content to sit on the fence and

wait to see how the practice develops. This is underlined by

results showing that while a surprisingly high 38% of

companies have two or more employees dedicated to social

media, the majority (62%) have one or none.

28

The resourcing question

For how much of the money you spend on social mediado you have an ROI figure?

Budget

fenceon theSitting


T HE S T A T E


9/16

ThemwordAlthough the industry has yet to develop a universally accepted set of metrics measuring

the effectiveness of social media campaigns, some distinct trends are emerging. Marking

a change from the 2009 survey, hard measures (such as direct traffic to websites and sales)

appear to be gaining ground over softer measures (such as brand awareness, customer

engagement and customer satisfaction).

9

Change in importance of metrics used since 2009 surveyWhich are the most important metrics when assessingsocial media activity for your organisation?

Social Media Survey 2010continuedF SOCIAL


10/16


11/16


Soundfamiliar?

11

Many thanks to all the companies and

agencies that completed the survey this

year. There were a lot of juicy comments in

the free format fields and here are the

most interesting, useful and controversial

ones. The vast majority are from clients

(anonymously, obviously) but we have included a

small number of agency quotes too.

Difficult to measure as it's all part of the integrated approach

and does not work independent of other activity, although

we are able to look at referrals from them to our sites, but

that's the extent of the measure.

We always put different urls/numbers or promo codes only

for social media.

Vital and instant feedback from the end users, via Facebook

and Twitter, as well as click throughs to our website after apost on Facebook or Twitter.

No hard figures other than increased blog traffic and

increased visitation/subscriptions to our social profiles, but

we're building a loyal network of followers and fans who

we interact with regularly. We'll be able to leverage that

network for marketing initiatives down the road.

Really hard question. Social Media covers aspects of the

business we're not used to focusing on so heavily so new

metrics are being introduced. Therefore comparisons with

things such as direct mail/ppc are difficult and often put SM

in a bad light.

Gut instinct.

Traffic to sites, improved Google Page Rank, sales, delivery

against KPIs. More definitive outputs/outcomes are expected

in showing the value of social media activity than traditional

PR but that is because the sector is at an earlier stage of

evolution. Who really believes Advertising Value Equivalent

(AVE) or Opportunities To See (OTS) are accurate measures of

anything? But they're accepted as PR industry standards

because they've been around for a long time, and because

clients understand them in a way they don't always

understand social media outcomes.

Much of the benefit of social media is long-term and

cumulative it is not an exact comparison to measure thevalue against other marketing activity.

Value got from social media investment


12/16

Sound familiar?continued

12

Use of social media insights

A weekly report goes out to relevant parties.

Honestly, it is shared more as a morale booster than

anything else. :(It has raised top management awareness but also suspicion.

We are not getting the results others seem to get from Social

Media and lack top management buy-in to do things better.

Reviewed Customer Care policy and guidelines. Updated

all legal contracts with partners and distributors. Updated

all HR contracts. Used feedback for case studies. Used crisis

management of fallen brands as case studies.

Segmentation and consumer insights.

We have used them to make changes to the website that a

number of customers have suggested.

We often use comments and queries from social media sites

to improve our FAQ/support service and monitor customer

experience with our product.

We use any and all insights from our engagement with

social media to develop products, services and strategies.

We don't do everything people suggest or change

everything people moan about, but we try to listen to

everything and think about it.

We believe that our vertical isn't one which is easy to target

via social media due to the customer target (30+).

We've discovered that we have had success in the older

demographic (45+) from social media, which was a realsurprise, and how to use it to target older clients.

Reactions to paid-for buzz monitoring

Could do better. Still gaps.

Difficulty to track sentiment and non English sites.

It is more costly than one would expect, and requires a

significant investment in human analysis on top of the

automated monitoring and reporting.

Mediocre.

They vary greatly in quality.

Human interpretation and filtering is essential to obtain

any kind of actionable insight. Tools that claim to assess

sentiment are wholly unreliable for incisive comms/PR

online.

Only relevant if they have human analysis on top of data.



13/16

Sound familiar?continued

13

Particular social media problemsand challenges

Become increasingly monetised by advertising, and used

increasingly as a commercial channel. This could influence its

perception by users and potentially reduce its effectiveness.

Become more important because everyone will be saying

its more important.

I hope that there will be more guidance on the measurement

of the value of social media. This is the main issue for us in

terms of justifying additional spend we really don't know how

much value social media is providing at the moment.

Facebook inactivity.

I think Facebook will become more influential as it offers

more features for more groups and types of people. Twitter

will become a tool primarily for customer service and media

announcements and will be regarded more and more as a bit

of a fad, the next MySpace if you will. The importance of

Bloggers as opinion leaders will continue to rise.

It will become increasingly personalised, meaning that

users will only be exposed to products and services that

they already know that they will prefer, self-limiting their

exposure to other products and services.

It's going to move even more mobile with more people

uploading pictures and video and companies interacting

with customers in their stores.

Less hype, more focus on measurement and delivering a real

return to the bottom line.

Tighter integration with purchase focussed functionality -i.e. embedded e-commerce.

Further integration into search. Search engines becoming

much cleverer in the ways it deals with social media links.

Users will be pissed off by tons of marketing bullshit being

forced into social media by companies.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Don't know!

As a multinational company creating an appropriate balance

of local interest material with overall company aims.

Encouraging local markets to be involved rather than setting

up their own initiatives which may not follow overall aims,

best practice, branding or that simply wither and die because

they are set up by individuals and don't have the resource to

maintain on regular basis.

As many other brands, we need to identify the value of our

online influencers.

As social media spans across so many disciplines it's become

the new area for inter departmental conflict and like the web

years ago, internal customers think it's something you can

'knock up' in an afternoon & tag onto the end of a comms plan.

Controlling spurious and inaccurate comments posted to

social media and to the various blogs.

Getting over the fear of not being in control is an issue for

some senior decision makers. There's only so many times you

can explain to senior people that you can't have total control

over social media.

Issue with understanding that social media takes time and

is NOT a magic bullet.

Keeping the conversation going with customers without a

real 'conversation strategy' . Keeping users engaged and

communicating over time is a real skill.

Lack of strategy, how can we use social media to generate

more revenues. Lack of technology to measure its success,

lack of trained people.

The thought that unless we do it brilliantly we shouldnt be

doing it at all. Unfortunately no-one thinks they have the

time to do it brilliantly.

Weak leadership is a problem; stronger executive leadership

would drive changes in staff and responsibilities.

Not all of our products/brands naturally fit in the social space.

Senior Managers form the various countries have different

points of view on social media and top management haschosen a do-it-all approach that lacks real strategy.

How do you think social media willchange over the next 12 months?

The belief that social media is free,

quick and easy. It is essentially

none of those things and creating

a valid third space for brands takes

talent, time and proper funding.

Bigger and bigger, foursq will die

out and be replaced with something

we don't know about today.


14/16

Buzz monitoring and online brand / product tracking -one off, weekly, or monthly. Using state of the art tools and(always) manual intervention.

Social media audit- including share of voice, sentiment,conversation analysis (in blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter,

video), competitor analysis, key influencer identification, and

recommendations.

Strategy setting - including consultancy, over-arching socialmedia strategy and internationally.

Communityset up, participation, content creation andmanagement.

Blogger outreach - key influencer identification, prioritisation,

seeding, and ongoing outreach and relationship building.

Online news distribution - including graphics and videos.

Best practice consultancy and training - bespoke for yourneeds.

Social media campaigns - creation, design, production,execution and media buy.

Highly experienced- we work with over 50 clients in social media.

Strength in numbers - 18-strong social media team.

Expert- highly experienced leaders in Eva Keogan andLeanne Rinning.

One stop shop - a special cross digital team (rare in the digitalagency world) enables realisation of synergies with other

online service we run (SEO, PPC, affiliate, display, usability).

International scope - offices in 15 countries.

Leanne brings a dose of real-world savvy to your online PR, currently

overseeing and executing online PR and social media campaigns for

clients including Sky, Jumeirah, Nuffield Health, Philips, LV=, Molton

Brown, RBS and Samsung. Before joining bigmouthmedia in 2008

Leanne served as a Senior Account Manager at a major public affairs

agency for 5 years.

A recognised social media evangelist and corporate social media

expert, Eva Keogan works on clients including Starwood, Barrett

Homes and FSA. In addition to her background in social media and

communications, she has also been running the successful blog

Nixdminx and is an active member and contributor of a number of

blogs and online publications.

or contact us at:

[email protected]

Twitter: @bigmouthmedia

www.bigmouthmedia.com

Wed love to discuss what our social media and online PR service

can do to help or improve your existing campaigns. For an

informal chat about the options, please contact our people:

14

Help!If you need help (a little or a lot) on social media please do get in touchHere are some of the most common services our clientsretain us to deliver and implement:

Reasons to choose social media from bigmouthmedia / LBi:

Leanne RinningHead of Online PR, bigmouthmedia UK

[email protected]

0131 561 2175

@lalrinn

Eva KeoganHead of Social Media, LBi

[email protected]

0207 063 6233

@nixdminx

THESTATE OFSOCIAL

dont miss

For the full report:

http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/social-media-and-online-pr-report

To see a video of the survey being presented and a survey infographic please visit:http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/live/articles/social-media-survey-2010.asp


15/16

THESTATE OFSOCIAL

CMOtake outs

15

Concentrated survey best bits, summarised for the busy CMO or head of ecommerce.

Marketing Director, bigmouthmedia

THE QUESTION ANSWER OUR SURVEY SAYS... BEING PROVOCATIVE...

the surveys best bits in 60 seconds by David Hardy

Do you plan on spendingmore money on social mediain the next 12 months?

How much of your marketingbudget are you spending onsocial media?

28% are spending nothing. The vastmajority of the rest are spending less than25,000.

What is that as a % of your total marketingspend? Pretty small Id guess? Is this logicalwhen 22% of the average persons onlinetime is spent on social media?

How many people in yourcompany are devoted tosocial media?

38% of companies have 2 or more staffdedicated to social media.

The kind of test and learn strategiesdemanded for successful social media atthis stage in its lifecycle require sufficientheadcount resourcing. Look at thecomments on page 13. Additionally, good

social media people are already like golddust - dont leave recruitment too late.

How much of your socialmedia spend have you got anROI for?

Only 6% of marketing departments havegot ROI for all their social media spend. 42%

have no ROI figure at all for social media.

Its a young, evolving marketing discipline.Dont let lack of ROI stop you from testing(and so spending). If you do, it might beyears before you catch up with yourcompetitors.

Are you using Facebook forresponding to customer service

posts and also promotions?

71% of companies are not responding tocustomer service issues and inquiries onFacebook. 40% of marketing departments

are not using Facebook for productpromotion/marketing.

Are you mad? Lay aside twitter and forgetyour highly expensive new iPhone app,focus on Facebook, generally its far more

heavily used and so should be your priorityunless there is a good reason why not.

Have you integrated your TVcampaigns with Social media?

Only 7% of companies have integratedtheir TV campaign with social media.

A massive synergy (i.e. revenue) upsidehere. And if you do integrate, when do youbrief the social media agency? Is it a lastminute rush job so you only get amediocre result?

46% dont use any buzz monitoring tool(even free ones)

The verbatim survey comments clearlyshow monitoring tools vary significantly inquality. To be useful to you, a human filter

layer (within your social media team oragency) is needed before the findings worktheir way to you.

Well start with an easy one.Only worry if you answered no. Only 0.8%of clients say that they will spend lessnext year on social media.


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S E O P P C A F F I L I A T E S D I S P L A Y S O C I A L M E D I A I N T E R N A T I O N A L

0845 130 0022 [email protected] @bigmouthmedia

WW

W.

B IG M

O U T H M E D IA. C

OM

This booklet was lovingly made from scratch by Andrew Girdwood, Eva Keogan, Stephen Connor, Alba Sort, Iain Bruce and David Hardy. Thanks again to our friends Linus and Alyia at Econsultancy. Lots of coffee was consumed in the making of this guide.

This booklet (apart from the sur vey) is copyright of bigmouthmedia. We are very happy (and flattered, actually) for you to quote or reproduce the content as long as you source it to bigmouthmedia and you dont reproduce it for any commercial purposes.

Documents

State of Social 2010