Aussie businesses pouring marketing dollars into social media

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:39

Business IT - Networking

A study of business social media usage has found more than 70 percent spend at least 10 percent of their marketing budget on social media and that, rather than re-allocating funds from other marketing activities, they are now increasing their marketing budgets.

The study Nielsen-Community Engine 2011 Social Media Business Benchmarking Study - undertaken for the second year by Nielsen in conjunction with social media, membership management and technology company Community Engine - found that 72 percent of businesses in 2010 participating in social media had allocated at least 10 percent of their marketing budget to it, an increase from 57 percent in 2009.

Nielsen said: "One of the major shifts this year was organisations increasing marketing budgets as opposed to last year when they reallocated it from traditional media. This year 44 percent of participating businesses expanded their marketing budgets to fund a social media strategy."

It added: "This year businesses have shifted from using social media for branding to customer relationships. 43 percent see social media as a way to build a relationship with customers and stakeholders, with 33 percent for branding, a significant drop from 61 percent in 2009."

This increased confidence in social media appears to be the result of improved measurement of its effectiveness. Nielsen said: "Only 16 percent of businesses [find] it difficult to measure the RoI of social media activities, down from 28 percent in 2009."

According to Nielsen, "The greatest proportion of businesses, 40 percent, allocated most of their social media budget to display advertising or maintaining a presence on Facebook, which is the most popular social network platform with one in four Australian businesses having a Facebook presence'¦Only 35 percent of businesses lack knowledge and expertise to implement social media activities, down from 53 percent in 2009."

With Australian businesses the most popular social media activities included: presence in social media networks (28 percent); tracking/monitoring what is said about their brand/organisation/staff (26 percent); responding to/acting on comments (25 percent).