State of Social Media USA Snapshot

CORPORATE
SOCIAL MEDIA USA
SNAPSHOT 2015
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION........................................... P. 2
CHAPTER 1:
Our respondents........................................... P. 3
CHAPTER 2:
Who’s in charge of social media............ P. 5
CHAPTER 3:
The social media scene in 2014............. P. 8
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A SNAPSHOT OF CORPORATE
SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE
UNITED STATES
As part of the build up to the 6th Annual Corporate Social
Media Summit New York we wanted to gauge some of the
top trends both now and in 2015. We reached out to our
US social community based in corporate brands to get a
snapshot of what’s the current key issues and likely trends
WE ASK THEM:
1. Who’s in charge: Who sets the social media strategy?
Which departments are working closely with the social
media team?
2. Key issues of 2014: What has been the top issue for the
social media team in 2014? What’s been of least importance?
3. A look ahead to 2015: What will be the top priority in 2015?
What’s going to be the least important issue in 2015? Are
budgets for social media tools increasing or decreasing in
2015?
The insight might not be as in-depth as our State of Corporate
Social Media Briefings but it does allow us to get a quick
temperature reading of social media in the US.
Check out our Corporate Social Media Summit New York at State of Social Media Briefing | Page 2
www.usefulsocialmedia.com/newyork

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SOME KEY FINDINGS:
1. Marcomms still presides over social media: Over half of
our respondents stated that social media strategy is set by
a colleague in a either a marketing or communications role.
The Chief Marketing Officer is the most likely person to be
setting social media strategy in a US corporation, with 18%
of respondents stating strategy comes from the CMO.
2. Content is king in 2014: 60% of social media executives
state that content creation was their top priority for 2014.
This echoes a trend that is found throughout marketing.
Content has been a key area of investment in 2014 - with
75% of the broader marketing community planning to
increase their content output by at least 15% over the next
six months. Does the focus on content within social media
teams, then, highlight the extent to which any social media
department’s strategy is fundamentally informed by that of
their peers in a broader marketing role?
3. Increased customer engagement is a top priority for
2015: Nearly half of executives polled said that the two
top issues for 2015 were to differentiate themselves in
ever-more crowded marketplaces, and to create deeper,
meaningful and long-lasting relationships with their
customers. 47% of social media executives state that
enhancing customer engagement is top priority in 2015.
Liam Dowd
Marketing Manager
@liamdowd10

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CHAPTER 1: OUR RESPONDENTS
This Corporate Social Media USA Snapshot 2015 whitepaper, is
based on findings from a survey conducted in October 2014
with the Useful Social Media community based in the USA.
Over 200 executives shared their views, helping us identify key
trends both now and for the year ahead.
As with our State of Corporate Social Media Briefing, we focus
on the ‘corporate’ social media angle.
All findings in this briefing will be based on the 134 executives
that identified themselves as working for ‘brands, end users
and corporations’. We make this distinction because research
has shown that the agencies, consultants and technology
vendors who make up the rest of the space have a somewhat
imperfect view as to core corporate trends for the year ahead.
DATA IN CONTEXT
This is the first USM whitepaper that looks exclusively how
social media is evolving in the US. As such we’re unable to draw
conclusions from a direct year-on-year comparison. However,
the data will be compared to relevant findings from the State
of Corporate Social Media 2014 report - hopefully enabling us
set the scene on where social is, and is heading, for US brands
in the year ahead.
FULL DATA SET
One can see the entire data set here

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CHAPTER 2: WHO’S IN CHARGE OF
SOCIAL MEDIA
As is often the case within a business, the seniority and
position of the top-level executive tasked with oversight of
a particular department gives a lot of information as to the
credibility - and function - of that department in the eyes of
the business as a whole. To that end the first question we
asked our respondents concerned who,within a business, was
ultimately responsible for setting social media strategy.
WHO OVERSEES YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY?
Chief Marketing Officer.............................................................................18%
Chief Communications Officer...............................................................13%
VP of Marketing..............................................................................................15%
VP of Digital......................................................................................................5%
Director of Social Media.............................................................................17%
Other.....................................................................................................................32%
From this chart, one can be reasonably confident that social
media is still viewed as a largely a marcomms function within
large companies. Just over 51% of respondents indicated
that their social media strategy is set by an employee residing
within the marcomms department. The role that most
commonly sets the social media strategy is Chief Marketing
Officer at 18%.
32% of respondents had a different experience however.
The next most popular home for social within a business was
with the PR, and the Customer Intelligence teams - which
demonstrates an increasing awareness of the power of social
media to give critical insights as to the future of the business,
and the needs of the customer base. Due to this being a free-text
option responses have not been assigned to any suggested
roles to avoid any misplacing of responses.
Interestingly - and maybe worryingly - only 16% of
respondents state that their social media strategy is set by a
Director of Social Media.

#CSMNY
If social media was maturing along the commonly understood
path towards a ‘hub and spoke’ model, one would expect
to see a much higher percent of respondents stating that
strategy is set by the Director of Social Media. The fact so
few social media departments are autonomous to the extent
a Social Media Director sets their strategy suggests a certain
remaining skepticism or unsureness about the legitimacy of
social as a business function in its own right. Of course, the
more positive alternative reading is that companies have come
to see social as more sensibly a channel for other functions
to utilise - that creating an utterly independent social media
department would lead to a ‘ghettoisation’ and a siloing
of knowledge and expertise that would be ultimately less
conducive to the evolution of a ‘more social business’ in the
future.
It will be interesting to see which of the two alternatives
seems most obvious based on next year’s findings.
WHICH TEAMS DO YOU WORK CLOSELY WITH, WITH
REGARDS TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS?
Communications.............................................................................................63%
Marketing...........................................................................................................80%
Customer Service ..........................................................................................34%
Sales.......................................................................................................................27%
Data Analytics..................................................................................................25%
Product Design / Innovation....................................................................21%
Not surprisingly the above chart highlights that the social
media team works most closely with marketing (80%), with
communications (63%) in second place. This reinforces the
assumption made above that social is seen, fundamentally, as
a marketing and communications tool within the majority of
businesses.
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

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This seems to be a disappointing finding, if one subscribes to
the notion that social can and should have an impact on every
area of the business. The numbers above seem to suggest that
while the more forward looking American businesses have
begun to leverage social for broader purposes, the majority
are still either unsure of the benefits, or struggling to adapt...
For instance, only 34% say that they work closely with their
customer service team. At our Social Media for Customer
Service 2014 Summit, Glen Gilmore, one of the Forbes top 50
social media influencers, stated that by 2020 90% of customer
service will happen on social media. It is clear many US
companies have a long way to go.
This lack of application and adoption of social media into
different areas of business is not unique to US companies.
In our State of Corporate Social Media 2014 Briefing,
respondents stated that marketing (62%) and communications
(74%) are critical foci for social media teams. Yet in contrast,
only 35% of respondents said the same about customer
service; 17% about commerce; and a meagre 8% about product
development.
It seems to be the case that marketing and communications
currently hold a disproportionate amount of attention of social
media teams around the world.
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CHAPTER 3: THE SOCIAL MEDIA
SCENE IN 2014
In this section, we look a little more deeply at the current
priorities for social media executives in the United States.
Considering the findings above, it we reasonable to assume
that the top issues will be those related directly to marketing
or communications.
THE MOST IMPORTANT
ISSUES IN 2014
Embedding social
media across the company
Critical................34%
Important..........62%
Unimportant.....3%
Social listening and
data analysis
Critical................51%
Unimportant.....5%
Unrivaled customer
experience
Critical................54%
Unimportant.....5%
Content creation
Critical................60%
Unimportant.....4%
Creating a truly
multi-channel approach
Critical................52%
Unimportant.....5%
Social media
customer service
Critical................37%
Unimportant.....13%
Social media and
e-commerce
Critical................26%
Unimportant.....28%
Social media for networking
and lead generation
Critical................25%
Unimportant.....29%
Mobile marketing
Critical................27%
Unimportant.....24%
Measurement and ROI
Critical................45%
Unimportant.....8%
Heightening local relevancy
Critical................34%
Unimportant.....19%
Platform developments
and updates
Critical................30%
Unimportant.....16%
Social media for regulated
industries
Critical................25%
Unimportant.....28%

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As can be seen from the charts, this is most emphatically
correct... The top three issues for social media executives
are all sensibly categorised as part of the marketing and/or
communications function. Content creation comes top - with
an enormous 60% of respondents listing it as critical. Second
recognises the role of social media executives in creating
an unrivaled customer experience - an increasing priority
for brands struggling with changing customer journeys and
expectations, and a challenge for many departments across
a business. The third priority focuses on multi-channel, and
recognises the difficulties inherent in creating a unified
message to consumers across a rapidly fragmenting series of
platforms and channels.
However, not every finding tallies with the impression created
thus far.
1. Only 37% of respondents stated that building an integrated,
efficient and authentic response to your customer is a
critical issue. Considering that, according to a plethora
of other research social customer service is an ever more
important facet of the social media executive key issue and
area of focus in social media - it’s surprising to see that social
media executives don’t see it as of high importance.
2. Considering both our own and other research is filled with
suggestions that social media’s next step within business
is to become adopted across many different departments,
it is somewhat disconcerting that only 34% of respondents
see integration and embedding of social as of critical
importance. This would seem to allude to the fact that the
social media department has rather less agency than one
would hope, that they are very much a junior partner within
businesses - backing up our point from page 6.
3. Only 26% of businesses see using social media as a way of
driving business and e-commerce as a critical issue.

#CSMNY
The final two findings are somewhat disconcerting. For social
media to be taken seriously by the C-Suite and become part of
the core fabric and strategy of brands in the US, it needs to be
seen to help drive a business forward. And as CMOs well know,
the way to do that is show ROI and an impact on the top line,
if not the bottom. The fact that only a quarter of respondents
say that this is critically important seems to show a disconnect
with the ultimate needs of a company, and again reinforces
the belief that a social media department in many companies
is a junior group with little sway at board level. It is only when
social media executives are able to show that their actions
drive business and commerce that we’ll see social become
more integrated and ingrained in the strategy of business.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU REVIEW THE
SOLUTIONS/TOOL(S) YOU USE?
Continuous basis............................................................................................44%
Monthly................................................................................................................8%
Every 6 months................................................................................................16%
Annually...............................................................................................................22%
Less than once a year..................................................................................10%
From the above, it seems that ‘best in class’ social media tools
and solutions have still not been identified, and that corporate
practitioners are still on the lookout for products and services
that match their needs.
Nearly half of our respondents are continually reviewing their
tools/solutions. This figure can both suggest that current tools
don’t fully meet the needs of the corporate world, but can also
be introduced to highlight quite how fast paced the change in
this space is - and that new tools are constantly needed for the
challenges and opportunities appearing on the horizon.

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WHAT’S HAPPENING TO YOUR BUDGET FOR SOCIAL
MEDIA SOLUTIONS/TOOLS IN 2015?
Increasing............................................................................................................42%
Decreasing.........................................................................................................11%
Staying the same............................................................................................47%
Equally, a significant proportion of our responder-base seem
to recognise that their current tools and solutions are not fit
for purpose given the expansion of their role and the pace of
change in the space. A full 42% plan to increase their budgets
here over 2015.
Both of these charts seem to show with some authority that
there’s a lot to play for for the service providers - who you’ll
be able to meet and learn from at our Summits over the next
twelve months.
Of course, the latter chart also seems to have some positive
messages for those hoping that social will continue its journey
to becoming a critical part of customer experience delivery and
business operations.
The fact that a full 42% of respondents plan to increase their
budget for social tools, it seems that large companies see
value in social, and are allocating more budget to the function
in the hope of driving greater results.
Opportunity to learn more:
At The Corporate Social Media
Summit New York (June,
15-16th 2015) speakers from
the world’s biggest and most
exciting social brands will be
sharing their insight, and skin-in-
the-game experiences, on
how to fully leverage social data
in the corporate setting. You
can join them! Click here to
find out more.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES IN 2015
Top priority
Embedding social media across the company.....................................
Enhancing your customer engagement..................................................
Unrivaled customer experience..................................................................
Social media impact measurement...........................................................
Least Important
Embedding social media across the company.....................................
Social media impact measurement...........................................................
Unrivaled customer experience..................................................................
Enhancing your customer engagement..................................................
Nearly half of social media executives in the US see enhancing
customer engagement as the top priority in 2015. With the
amount of ‘noise’ in marketing increasing every day, and with
brands facing more and more challenges to cut through that
noise and engage their customer base, it’s not surprising that
this is such a core focus for social media executives in the year
ahead. Social channels are a critical part of any wide-ranging
and forward thinking engagement strategy...
More worrying is the fact that only 13% of respondents told us
that measuring social’s impact was a top priority for 2015. As
mentioned above, for social to continue to grow in influence
and credibility within large businesses, executives must be able
to show results in a format understood and accepted by the
C-suite.
Considering the vast amount of confusion and uncertainty
around social media’s impact, one would assume that this
would therefore be rather more of an important goal for the
social media team within those businesses. However, a huge
45% say impact measurement is their ‘least important issue’.
While no-one would dispute that social teams have a diverse
and challenging role with several priorities at any one time,
it still seems rather blinkered that so many don’t appear to
ascribe much importance to determining whether they’re
successful or not.
22%
47%
13%
18%
27%
6%
22%
45%

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6.15.15

State of Social Media USA Snapshot

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