Survey Finds C-suite Cares about Brand and Social Media; Facebook Ranks Highest in Perceived Value to Brand

Newburyport, Mass. – Matter Communications conducted a survey of marketing decision-makers regarding their organization’s attitudes and practices in social media. Not surprisingly, nearly all of those surveyed are aware of the importance of branding in social channels. More interesting, 65% of those say that their C-suite is also interested in how their brand is perceived in social channels.

Most (71%) marketers believe they are doing a good job in reporting the brand’s perception in social media, and say they measure it primarily by level of engagement (56%), although many (31%) rely on pure quantitative measures, such as number of fans or followers, while 11% measure on gut feel.

Patty Barry, Principal at Matter Communications notes, “Social media isn’t static, and there’s no one lesson from this data – in fact, it could change by next month – but it’s an interesting pulse-check on where marketing executives see social media playing in their corporate branding strategy. The fact that the C-suite at more than half of these sample companies is interested in the brand and social media is a mandate to all marketers to get even better at planning, engaging and measuring sentiment over time in these networks. One-off efforts and gut-feel measurement won’t satisfy the need for finding a genuine and engaging brand voice that ignites increased loyalty, interest and trust among a company’s stakeholders.”

For the companies surveyed, Facebook ranked highest (84%) in perceived value to the brand, with YouTube (45%), LinkedIn (41%) and Twitter (38%) following closest behind. At the same time, a paper released at the 2012 International Public Relations Conference on Millenials’ interaction with fan pages on Facebook, shows that this group; comprised of intensive users of social media platforms, have an arms-length relationship with Facebook fan pages. That divergence in output versus consumption by this highly sought after group of consumers will no doubt impact the ongoing evolution of companies’ presence in social networks.