Facebook and LinkedIn are on an even footing when it comes to the question of which social media tool organisations anticipate will have the greatest influence on their clients within the next two years.
"LinkedIn has certainly been well supported in SA and we see that this will be a key communication channel for business relations within the social media environment. We look forward to the second generation of social media platforms that are growing the service niche markets," comments Greg Comline, Deloitte senior manager, on one of the key findings of the ITWeb-Deloitte Social Media Survey, which ran online for 14 days in July, attracting 125 responses.
Facebook was only slightly in the lead with a score of 26.89%, followed by LinkedIn at 26.05%, Twitter at 15.97% and YouTube at 6.72%. Google received the lowest rating (5.04%) for having future influence as a social media tool.
Another interesting finding was that 25.78% of respondents said their company does not allow the use of social media.
Some 35.94% of respondents said their companies do not track 'mentions' of the company's name in the digital space at all, while 17.19% track mentions monthly, 14.06% weekly and 15.63% daily.
When asked if controls were in place to mitigate the risks associated with social media, 29.78% of respondents confirmed that their organisations do have such measures in place, while 24.73% did not, and 35.48% were unsure.
Comline advises: "The perceived risks of social media are big contributors to companies not engaging with social media; however, Deloitte encourages clients to listen to what is being said in the social media environment. Following the listening stage, it is important to understand the validity of the issues that are being raised about the company. Following on from this, companies can engage with clients."
Most organisations (71.09%) use social media as a business tool, however, only 10% measure their ROI from using social media, while 39.17% of organisations say there is no need for a tangible formal measure of ROI from social media investments.
Comline believes this is due to the trend of businesses introducing social media but failing to move on from the 'testing' stage to integrate social media into their business operations. He also believes that, as social media progresses, the ROI will be critical to demonstrate the financial returns for organisations.
The survey also found that organisations mostly use social media for branding purposes (61.72%), PR/marketing (53.91%), corporate communications (41.41%) and recruitment (30.47%).
Expanding on this key finding, Comline said: "Social media has naturally been positioned in the marketing and branding space; however, we are starting to see more extensive use of social media within the enterprise in a number of areas; HR is probably the next most likely. Over time, we expect to see companies achieving great internal efficiencies through the use of social media technologies."
Interestingly, most respondents (73.95%) believe that analysis of social media data can give organisations the tools necessary to make informed strategy decisions, while only 10.08% disagreed and 15.97% were unsure.
"In an age of big data, it is important to understand what structured data is available within companies and how this can be complemented with unstructured social data. We anticipate a significant increase in data usage in CRM and client and staff engagements," Comline concludes.
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