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To Be or Not to Be
However amusing these incidents may be, they underscore the type of nightmare scenarios that CIOs and CEOs fear as they wrestle with the issue of social media in their organizations. Studies show that many companies have been hesitant to allow their workers to engage in social media because of security and legal concerns, fear of embarrassing or brand-damaging remarks leaking out, or simply seeing little value in social media.
However, if social media proponents are correct, CIOs who ignore or fight against the rise of social media will hurt their organizations, causing them to fall behind the curve, miss crucial opportunities, fail to shape and defend their brands, and suffer the competitive consequences.
As Business Week reports:
"For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn't putting itself out there, it ought to be."
Money Talks
Gordon's study shows a shift in priorities, with companies saying they want to move from using social media primarily for PR and branding purposes towards using social media for sales and prospecting. "Lead generation" is what organizations said they wanted most from social media going forward, the study found.
Organizations also are shifting their use of Twitter from general communications towards attracting customers, the survey showed. Right now, the chief business use of Twitter is for transmitting breaking news, followed by extending a personal face to customers, said Gordon. Going forward, businesses want to use Twitter for sales prospecting by targeting "self-identified" new customers. This is now the top priority, moving up from fifth place on the list to first.
Currently, the study showed, about one-half of the organizations use social media to promote themselves through social media messaging (56%), monitor trends among their customers (53%), and provide ways for customers to interact with their company (52%). About one-third use social networks to research new product ideas (34%), and about one-fourth advertise on social networks (27%).
The study showed that smaller organizations use social media to attract customers more than do larger organizations, and that larger organizations use social media internally more than small companies. "As we compare social media usage at smaller companies with 1 to 10 employees to organizations with over 1,000, there is a steady decrease in the percentage of usage," said Gordon.
"Companies with 10 or fewer employees are about 30% more likely to use social media for public relations, branding, and understanding customers than companies with over 1,000 employees, and twice as likely to use it for lead generation," the study showed.
Are smaller companies more nimble and savvy? Perhaps, but they depend on social media more as an inexpensive marketing medium. As Gordon pointed out, because larger organizations have more resources to reach their customers, such as larger marketing groups and advertising budgets, social media may not be as big a priority for them.
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