Highlights from Sponsored Research with Aberdeen Group

3.24.09 by Blake Cahill {Blake Cahill, Brand Management, Consumer Generated Media, New Media, Social Media}

Marketers are finally moving into Social Media. It’s been taking a while. Even though millions of users are flocking to social media sites every day, most marketers have stayed away or only been experimenting. Twitter year over year grow exceeded 1300% in a recently published article on site and user growth. Many marketers and organizations either didn’t understand the opportunities inherent in this channel or the how to’s required to join the conversations–without sounding like product/brand pushers.

Things are finally starting to change. Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter.

According to the “The ROI on Social Media Marketing” report from the Aberdeen Group, that we (Visible Technologies) sponsored, marketers have developed the tools and methodologies to drive marketing ROI by listening to and learning from customers and prospects. As so, the dollars are following this rising tide.

The Aberdeen report found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.

“Companies use multiple approaches to identify the individuals who wield the greatest amount of influence in any given topic area and to track changes in their influence over time,” said Jeff Zabin of Aberdeen. “Best-in-class companies engage these top influencers as brand evangelists, and then track the impact of their words and actions in terms of return on marketing investment.”

eMarketer estimated that social network advertising alone will rise over 17% this year to $2.35 billion, up from $2 billion in 2008.

But simply because companies are increasing their spending on social media doesn’t mean all the drawbacks have disappeared. Measurement, in particular, is a sticking point.

The Aberdeen research showed that 39% of companies found it somewhat difficult to measure social media, and 20% said it was very difficult.