Social media has gone through drastic changes these past few years, and a new report released by Sprout Social and The Harris Poll just revealed the state of the modern industry with all things having been considered and taken into account. This report surveyed 778 professionals working in the industry, ranging from marketing managers, customer support representatives as well as communications experts.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that social media budgets are expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. 80% of the people that responded to this survey said that their organizations plan to increase the budgets for social media marketing and the like. 15% expect a 71% to 100% increase, 26% indicated that a 51% to 70% increase was on the cards, 23% cited a 31% to 50% uptick and 33% said that up to 30% increases were upcoming.
96% of business leaders agreed that increasing social media budgets was important because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up keeping them in line with competitors. 94% cited the positive impact on brand recognition as a prime reason for investing more in social media, 92% said that it would make them more competitive, 91% use social media to better understand customers and 89% said that it helped them to predict future trends.
91% went so far as to say that the success of their company is largely contingent on how they would go about using social media to derive important data that can help them create a sufficient strategy. In spite of the fact that this is the case, 69% also mentioned that these insights are currently being under utilized by their organizations.
This raises the question: how can businesses extract the maximum amount of value from this data by leveraging the latest tools and tech? 71% of business leaders said that they are already using Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM for short. Social Media Management programs, or SMM, are also being used by 69% of survey respondents since this can make it easier to plan their social media outreach than might have been the case otherwise.
However, there are also some challenges that must be addressed. 42% of the people that answered questions contained within this survey said that they don’t have access to as many social media tools as they would prefer. A similar proportion, 42%, stated that their tech solutions are not properly integrated with the overall framework that they are working with, and that is something that will most definitely need to change.
A lot of variance can be seen in terms of how easy people find it to demonstrate the benefits of the data they have on hand. While 70% claimed that it was at least somewhat easy, 11% stated that it was somewhat difficult.
However, most survey respondents agreed that things are about to get a lot easier over the next few years. Of the people surveyed, only 5% said that it will get harder to show the impact of these analytics on the bottom line. 81% said that it will become simpler, and 15% are expecting no major changes either way.
58% of professionals in the industry want improved integration to make their lives easier in the long run. 56% called for a greater level of collaboration between the disparate departments of their organization, and 54% are eager to see upcoming advancements in the tech so that they can use these sophisticated programs to get to the next stage.
With 97% of business leaders acknowledging that social data usage will become more relevant in the next three years, it will be interesting to see what further changes come to this industry.
Read next: Ease of Use Reigns: Consumers Prefer Apps Based on User-Friendliness
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that social media budgets are expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. 80% of the people that responded to this survey said that their organizations plan to increase the budgets for social media marketing and the like. 15% expect a 71% to 100% increase, 26% indicated that a 51% to 70% increase was on the cards, 23% cited a 31% to 50% uptick and 33% said that up to 30% increases were upcoming.
96% of business leaders agreed that increasing social media budgets was important because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up keeping them in line with competitors. 94% cited the positive impact on brand recognition as a prime reason for investing more in social media, 92% said that it would make them more competitive, 91% use social media to better understand customers and 89% said that it helped them to predict future trends.
91% went so far as to say that the success of their company is largely contingent on how they would go about using social media to derive important data that can help them create a sufficient strategy. In spite of the fact that this is the case, 69% also mentioned that these insights are currently being under utilized by their organizations.
This raises the question: how can businesses extract the maximum amount of value from this data by leveraging the latest tools and tech? 71% of business leaders said that they are already using Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM for short. Social Media Management programs, or SMM, are also being used by 69% of survey respondents since this can make it easier to plan their social media outreach than might have been the case otherwise.
However, there are also some challenges that must be addressed. 42% of the people that answered questions contained within this survey said that they don’t have access to as many social media tools as they would prefer. A similar proportion, 42%, stated that their tech solutions are not properly integrated with the overall framework that they are working with, and that is something that will most definitely need to change.
A lot of variance can be seen in terms of how easy people find it to demonstrate the benefits of the data they have on hand. While 70% claimed that it was at least somewhat easy, 11% stated that it was somewhat difficult.
However, most survey respondents agreed that things are about to get a lot easier over the next few years. Of the people surveyed, only 5% said that it will get harder to show the impact of these analytics on the bottom line. 81% said that it will become simpler, and 15% are expecting no major changes either way.
58% of professionals in the industry want improved integration to make their lives easier in the long run. 56% called for a greater level of collaboration between the disparate departments of their organization, and 54% are eager to see upcoming advancements in the tech so that they can use these sophisticated programs to get to the next stage.
With 97% of business leaders acknowledging that social data usage will become more relevant in the next three years, it will be interesting to see what further changes come to this industry.
Read next: Ease of Use Reigns: Consumers Prefer Apps Based on User-Friendliness
