Social Media: Where’s the Strategy?

While corporate participation in social media is increasing, many companies still do not have a strategic plan for its use. IT Business Edge’s Ann All has written several times about research that supports this. For instance, a Burson-Marsteller study released in early 2010 found many companies risked confusing customers and/or diluting their brands by creating multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, some of which lapse into disuse.

A new survey of 100 companies by search and social media consulting company Digital Brand Expressions (DBE) similarly found that while 78 percent of respondents were using social media, just 41 percent said they have a strategic plan. Click through for results of the survey.

Click through for results from a survey conducted by Digital Brand Expression (DBE) on strategic social media planning.

A Digital Brand Expressions(DBE) survey of 100 companies found that while 78 percent of them were using social media, just 41 percent said they have a strategic plan.

While just 41 percent of respondents have a strategic social media communications plan, a whopping 88 percent believe it’s important to have one.

For companies with a strategic plan in place, 94 percent include marketing activities in the plan. Seventy-one percent include public relations, and 55 percent include sales. Fewer companies include IT, customer service, HR/personnel and general employee usage.

Ed Moran, director of product innovation at Deloitte, in aninterview with Ann All, told her companies miss opportunities by neglecting areas other than marketing in their social media plans. “Your whole enterprise should care, not just marketing,” he said

The DBE survey found marketing is also most often responsible for creating and maintaining social media communication plans.

Here’s a worrisome statistic: Just 29 percent of companies with a strategic plan distribute communication policies and/or protocols to departments utilizing social media. As DBE notes, this creates an obvious risk of “employees saying the wrong things in the wrong ways to the wrong people at the wrong time.” IT Business Edge provided some good advice on creating social media policies in Social MediaPolicy Dos and Don’ts.