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An inability to measure outcomes and the risk of reputational damage are among the concerns that prevent organisations making the most of social media as a marketing tool

Social media is, from one point of view, a marketer’s dream. All of a sudden, the conversations their customers are having about their products and services are taking place in the open, ready to be monitored and, if possible, influenced.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that over two-thirds of respondents (68%) to a recent Information Age research study, conducted in partnership with online moderation tools vendor Tempero, revealed that their organisations are already using social media in their marketing efforts. This finding chimes with recent Gartner research, published in February 2010, which predicted that 80% of enterprise spending on social media will take place within the context of customer relationship management (CRM) software spending.

The most commonly adopted method of using social media as a marketing tool was participating in existing social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. Only 10% of those respondents that pursue social media marketing do so via their own branded social networks or Web 2.0 platforms.

The Information Age survey also asked which concerns prevent organisations from either adopting social media as a marketing tool in the first place, or extending their current use of social media in a marketing context. This revealed what businesses and public sector organisations consider to be the barriers, risks and shortcomings of social media as a route to market.

The number one barrier to social media marketing was a lack of staffing resources, with 44% of respondents – comprising IT, marketing and business leaders from public and private sector organisations – identifying it as such. To some degree, this can be seen as an effect of economic circumstances – ‘budgetary constraint’ was the third most commonly cited barrier – but there is also clearly a skills component: a ‘lack of in-house knowledge’ was identified by 28% as a barrier.

Measuring outcomes

The second most frequently cited barrier to social media marketing was the difficulty involved in measuring outcomes and proving value. This is a common complaint, according to analyst company Forrester, which has found that, on average, marketers rate their own ability to measure the outcomes of social media campaigns as only 4.5 out of ten.

That is not for a lack of available approaches – there are countless tools for monitoring social media activity, and just as many methods for calculating that activity’s commercial value. One might therefore conclude from the survey’s findings that the challenge lies in choosing the tools and metrics that best serve the organisation’s particular aims.

This is an important skill to master, as it is through measurement and monitoring that organisations will achieve one of the critical benefits of social media: the opportunity to eavesdrop on what customers are saying about their goods and services.

Forrester analyst Nate Elliott recommends that marketers: “1) identify a marketing objective; 2) choose measurement categories that match that objective; and 3) find a way to track those metrics in the social technologies they’re using”. In other words, they must have a clear idea of what they want to achieve in order to measure their ability to do so.

Reputational risk

Nearly a third of respondents (29%) said that ‘concerns over brand reputation’ have held back social media marketing initiatives, making it the fourth most cited barrier.

A supplementary questioned asked respondents what the most damaging result of social media activity could be; the majority of respondents (56%) said that it was negative publicity. It seems that the example of such companies as furniture retailer Habitat, whose attempt to use micro-messaging service Twitter to promote its sales resulted in accusations of capitalising on human tragedy, has had a cautionary impact on many organisations.

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