Top Social Marketing Challenges in 2012: Sufficient Resources and Measuring ROI
Awareness, a social media marketing software company, recently released its annual “State of Social Media Marketing” report, which examined the top areas for social marketing investment and the biggest challenges looming for the industry in 2012. Among the findings was that marketers are focused on presence, frequency and processes this year.
According to the report, increased presence across social marketing platforms is the top social marketing investment area in 2012, according to 70 percent of the more than 320 respondents. Increased frequency of content publishing was second with a 59 percent response, while more robust social marketing management and monitoring was third with 50 percent and 45 percent, respectively.
The report also found that 77 percent of respondents view a lack of sufficient resources as the biggest social marketing challenge in 2012, followed by 58 percent who pointed to measuring ROI as the top challenge this year.
Managing and growing a social presence followed with a 42 percent response, while integrating social with lead generation and sales was fourth with a 37 percent response.
Awareness found that 87 percent of marketers used Facebook as a social marketing platform in 2011, followed by 86 percent who used Twitter, 76 percent who used LinkedIn, 66 percent who used YouTube and 56 percent who used blogs.
Blogs are the top new social platform for 2012, with 28 percent of marketers expressing interest in increased investment in this tactic. Nineteen percent said they are most interested in boosting investment in forums, followed by 18 percent who said the same about YouTube.
Meanwhile, 91 percent of experienced social marketers said they plan on expanding their use of blogs, followed by 86 percent who said the same for YouTube, 59 percent who said the same about Foursquare, 50 percent who said the same for SlideShare, 43 percent who said the same for Flickr and 30 percent who said the same for Tumblr.
The report noted that 78 percent of marketers report monitoring social media channels for mentions of their brand at least a few times a week, while 62 percent report monitoring industry conversations with the same frequency. Of the marketers who said they did not monitor social media conversations in 2011, 70 percent said they plan to do so in 2012.
According to a separate presentation titled “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed” from comScore, social networking reached 1.2 billion users in October, or 82.4 percent of the world’s online population.
One in three of the world’s social networking users are in Asia Pacific, while 30 percent are in Europe, 18 percent are in North America, 10 percent are in Latin America and 9 percent are in the Middle East/Africa.
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