52% of organizations’ social media budgets are estimated to be allocated to social networking, while 13% are spent on blogs, 11% on micro-blogging, and 7% on wikis, per results from an IDC Global Technology and Industry Research Organization survey released in July 2012. Breaking the results down by industry, the report finds that retail allocates the largest proportion of its budgets to social networks (60.3%), while communication and media dedicates the most to micro-blogging (14.3%). Process manufacturing and securities and investment services are the top industries in terms of percentage of social media budgets devoted to blogs and wikis, respectively.
Managing Content Top Social Media Challenge
Data from the “IDC Global Technology and Industry Research Organization IT Survey, 2012” indicates that the top challenge cited in using social media tools – across all sectors – is managing and keeping track of all the posted content. Overall, measuring the impact of core business objectives is the next-most cited challenge, with justifying the expense of social software closely following.
The focus on content management – as opposed to ROI concerns – is interesting, given that other research has found marketers suggesting that social media ROI is either difficult to measure or that the returns simply are not there yet.
Customer Engagement a Key Driver
The IDC report also finds that the top drivers of social media usage are: increased awareness of products and/or services; gathering feedback from customers on products and services and engaging customers more deeply; and helping employees be more effective.
These results mesh with January research from Wildfire, which found increased awareness to be the top benefit of social media for global marketers, and more recent research from both IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers demonstrating the value which organizations today are placing on social media as a channel for customer engagement.
Other Findings:
- The IDC report also examines a variety of sectors, classifying them either as leaders, early adopters, late adopters, or laggards. Somewhat unsurprisingly, both the retail and consumer and recreational service verticals were identified as leaders.
- Education, insurance, professional services, and construction are seen as early adopters, while healthcare, banking, resource industries, and wholesale – among others – are viewed as late adopters.
About the Data: The IDC data is based on a survey of 4,177 respondents across 24 industries, with a full representation of private and public sector. Industry respondents were stratified across 5 company size segments, and respondents ranged from IT/line-of-business managers to executive-level management. The survey was fielded from February to March 2012.