The State of Social Business 2013
Altimeter hosts an annual Social Business survey to learn how social media is evolving within enterprise organizations. Data is then compared to previous reports providing a sense of movement to the numbers and also a developing benchmark for our analysts and clients. Our last survey was studied in Q3 2013 and also Q4 2012; the latter was used to provide context to a report published by Brian Solis and me in our report, “The Evolution of Social Business: Six Stages of Social Business Transformation.”
We are now making the data available to the public for free use under Creative Commons (cc) as part of our Open Research program. The figures included in this report are also compared to previous survey findings from 2011 and 2010. There are two publications available, which are embedded below as well — there’s a report with some analysis and we’ve also just published a PowerPoint deck so that you can easily incorporate the information in your presentations. All we ask is that you properly attribute the research back to Altimeter.
Overall, we found that investment in headcount and infrastructure have steadily grown, as companies reach “intermediate” stages of social business. Several are turning their sights from “social media” as an extension of marketing and communications, and seek to push a “social business” agenda throughout the organization. Top findings include:
- Most organizations are “intermediate,” with only 17% self-described as “strategic” in the execution of their social strategies.
- 78% of companies have a dedicated social media team, at the division level, corporate level or both — only 22% of companies do not have a dedicated team.
- Companies are committing more headcount to social media across all sizes of organizations. The biggest jump is for companies with more than 100,000 employees, which now report an average of 49 full-time employees supporting social media, compared to 20 in 2010.
- 85% of companies have an organizational social media policy, yet only 18% of companies report that their employees’ knowledge of social media usage and the organizational policy is either good or very good.