Measuring the effectiveness of social media
marketing and allocating sufficient resources to it were identified as the
biggest challenges facing marketers in 2012.
Results of a study conducted in
December 2012 by social marketing software provider, Awareness Inc. have
recently been released in a paper titled ‘The State Of Social Media Marketing:
Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment And Biggest Social Marketing
Challenges In 2012′
The survey, answered by 320 marketers from various
industries and with varied levels of experience in social marketing, highlights
how professionals can improve their social marketing skills and reach out to a
larger audience in order to maximise their ROI.
In 2012, there will be an increased presence of businesses
across social marketing platforms, according to the report. Content publishing
is predicted to happen at a higher frequency and social marketing management
and monitoring will receive more attention.
Among the major challenges that marketers continue to face
are the generation of sufficient resources – 77% of respondents identified this
is a challenge – followed by the ability to accurately measure the return on
investment generated by their marketing campaigns – 58% of respondents consider
this to be a challenge.
Apart from popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn, marketers are also trying to make use of other resources such as
blogs, forums and YouTube. Mobile is also recognised as a growing area for
investment.
It has been found that those who are new to social
marketing do not give much importance to the availability of appropriate tools
and methods, but those who already run social campaigns pay more heed to the
availability of the right tools and methods to reach out to the target
audience.
Emphasis on Measurement & Monitoring
78% of those surveyed have reported that they monitor
social media channels to check how often their brand is being mentioned, while
62% monitor industry conversations for the same purpose. Most of those who have
not concentrated on this activity in the previous year, plan to do so this
year.
While it is difficult to actually measure the ROI of a
campaign, it is necessary, in order to decide the future allocation of budgets.
A majority of marketers used the number of new fans and followers as an
indicator of their reach. Others used the amount of traffic generated from
social channels to Web properties as an indicator of success.
