Social media is the way of interactions with peoples through a virtual media. These are nothing more than a collection of web based applications that allow us to share and exchange our views through these platforms.
Social media is targeted by virtual marketers largely because of its popularity to both the private and professional users. Study shows, social media sites are used two or three times more by the users than any other sites and resulting in an increase of 37 percents more times indulged on these sites by the Americans.
Whatever said, social media has a great impact on commerce & contributing to what we understand as “e-commerce”. Marketing, marketing research, communication, promotion of sales, relationship development through loyalty programs, everything is possible to accelerate through the proper implementation of social media. In fact, these platforms are the first choice to finalize any business marketing analysis. And of course, this is a more qualified, reach, accessible, & solid stage than any traditional one.
Now, getting back to the motive of writing this post. You are definitely aware about the use of social media by your business competitors. This might have forced you to think like the use of social media is out of control & on the rise, and your competitors are getting some competitive edge than yours. But it is not important that your assumptions are correct every time. And I dare to say something like that because a recent study on this issue tells quite a different story.
Recently a research was performed on top level executives of United States and Canada to review their present use of social media and its potentiality along with how the applied social media suits their ultimate goals, approaches, missions, visions, or cutting edge strategies. Beside, this research intended to find out if there is any effective ways (Analytics & AdWords, for example) known by the executives to translate social media data into actionable piece of information. Also, tracing out the availability of scientifically and logically drawn policies to maintain a path between implementing social media and their effects on the organizations day to day operations had been an inferior intention of the said study.
What the research verified, unfortunately, is quite shocking. According to the research, only 30 companies out of 100 are able to supervise and scrutinize the risks arising from their activities through social media. Out of these 30 companies, only 15% can properly illustrate the corporate performance through metrics or other analytical tools of Google Analytics.
The research found some overwhelming information also. Among the participants, only one-fourth of the top level executives have heard about, and sometimes used, different reports of Google Analytics platform. Around 60 percents executives using this channel to interact with clients, around 35 percents to research, and around 50 percents executives to advertise only.
Interpretation of these statistics shows the actual scenario of current use of social media in business organizations. No doubt, the employees especially the decision makers of an organization are at least using different social media. But what is the benefit if they don’t even have any general knowledge of what a Multi Channel Funnel or a Cost Data Metrics are? They can’t use the simplest reports like Conversion Report or Social Sources Report. So, how does this narrowed use of social media can bring optimum results?
As this survey indicates, there is serious paucity of professional social media engineers and therefore the executives are missing “expert’s guidelines”, making the use of social media only for names.
The case is so serious when the research gives the idea that about 60 percents of the executives are bringing social media into play for only personal uses. While the organizations are exposing to more risks, it’s may be the high time to think twice before applying this only for craze.