Social Media is like Exercise for Enterprise

It seems that social media is like exercising for enterprises – everyone thinks it’s important, but few say they’re doing it enough. Hootsuite recently released the results of their 2014 Social Business Benchmark report, where they polled 750 enterprise employees on their outlooks, behaviors, and challenges with social media. From that group, 88 percent agreed that a presence on social media was key to their organization remaining competitive. Almost 75 percent of respondents said the number of departments using social media was growing at their company, though only 30 percent said the social strategies are very aligned across those departments. While there are many ways to track or collect data, it turns out actually using that data in an actionable way is not as easy. Perhaps as confidence in navigating social media grows, along with the resources invested in social media strategies, more organizational challenges arise, much as they do when a startup begins to scale.

Globally, 91 percent of internet users aged 16-64 have atleast one social media account, and the average internet user actually has five different accounts. Those numbers may seem astounding, but they point to the importance of defining and managing a social media strategy at the enterprise level. Hootsuite found that 84 percent of enterprise respondents believed social media enhanced customer relationships, showing that companies understand what they must do – now they just need to act on it.