Social Media: Time to Grow Up

When it comes to social media in the corporate sector, there’s still a huge tendency to “play around” with the tools available, yet not fully commit to a formal strategy involving those annoying little things like ROI, according to a new study from Forrester Research.

There is a bit of good news in the survey**, in that three-quarters of corporations surveyed have spent $100k or less on such tools — in other words, at least they’ve spent something on social media. But here’s better news: More than half (53%) of the 145 interactive marketing professionals surveyed plan to increase their social media budgets, while just 5% expect to decrease those budgets, and 42% said their social media spending would remain the same. That’s encouraging, especially considering our current economic conditions.

But the study shows that companies are still just dipping their toes in the social media waters. To truly make it work, they need to jump in. Head first. From a high diving board.

Many, of course, aren’t. So I find this line scary (from one of the blog posts below on this study): Forty-five percent of marketers say their social budgets are determined as needed, and 23 percent say they scrape together funds from wherever they can find them. While it’s a step in the right direction, it’s not the commitment that is needed to go that extra distance to really execute a social-media campaign, add social-media tools to a Web site, create a social network, etc.

I love the name of the actual report, “Social Media Playtime Is Over,” because many are still just messin’ around with it. For example, the study showed that many are not incorporating social media into their overall marketing plans. And let’s face it: $100k at best for social media is paltry.

The report’s author says:

Even though the budgets are small and growing, we recommend to our clients, in order to be successful, not to approach social media marketing as experimental, but to put the right roles, process, and measurement capabilities in place to be effective. Remember, the most expensive cost isn’t the tools, the most expensive part is the soft costs: strategy, education, process, roles, measurement.

Key Takeaway? Social media budgets are small, but are growing during a recession, yet brands shouldn’t approach this as an experiment, and should have a proper strategy complete with objectives, roles, processes, and measurement.

I remember the days when you could have replaced the words “social media” with “online advertising” in the above two paragraphs. Social media is pretty much at the point where online advertising was in, say, 1996 or ‘97. I know … I was there, covering the then-emerging space as a reporter and editor.

I realize the social-media space is going to “get there.” But the uptake time is going to have to be much faster than the speed at which online advertising caught on — after all, it was much more of a leap to get people actually online in the 90’s than in using social networks today. Besides, as was presented in this study, more and more people are getting used to social media — and much more quickly, too.

**I’ve only read press coverage on the study, as I’m not about to pay $800 for it. Here’s the two articles I read on it: AdAge.com and BizReport. The details in this post come from those two stories, as well as the study author’s own blog.