Social Media Integration: Priorities for 2011
In the Social Media Integration Benchmark Study published last week, I highlighted that only 35% of the businesses in the research had achieved any kind of integration between their websites and social media channels.
Continuing with that theme, and providing a different perspective, website integration has been found to be the top priority among a group of social media decision-makers surveyed by Jeremiah Owyang, of the California-based consulting firm Altimeter Group.
In a blog post yesterday, entitled Analysis: 2011 Corporate Social Strategy Will Focus on Corporate Website Integration, Jeremiah shared the initial findings of a survey of 140 US companies with over 1,000 employees in which the respondents were asked to select their three top social media marketing objectives for 2011.
As the Altimeter Group chart above shows, website integration was a top priority for 46.7% of the companies in the survey. Commenting on this, Jeremiah said:
Social Strategists have deployed social media in existing social networking channels like Facebook, Twitter, and beyond. Yet there’s an inbalance as they’ve joined customers where they are, but have not tied it back to their overall corporate website.
…the first steps will be simple sharing tools, then aggregating discussions from branded communities…
Developing on-going dialogue with customers was the next most common priority and Jeremiah was quick to point out that many companies are doing it wrong and will continue to do so:
…while they’re updating content at a rapid pace, they lack true dialog, engagement, and enabling the customer to leave their own voice…
…most are unable to give up legacy behaviors of direct marketing, advertising, and spewing content in all channels.
It’s interesting to note that social commerce and mobile/location strategies were the top priorities for a much smaller proportion of the companies in the research. This will no doubt be something that Jeremiah discusses further in other blog posts, but it’s encouraging to hear that the majority of businesses view the fundamentals of customer engagement and website integration as being more important.
