Social Media Strategists Focus Efforts In 2011

According to data by Altimeter Group presented at LeWeb’10 by Analyst Jeremiah Owyang, in 2011, the top areas social media strategists will focus their internal strategy investments on are:

• Creating ROI measurements
• Education and training
• Determining an organizational model

The research is based on a survey of strategists that work for companies with over 1000 employees, are decision makers for social media programs, and are on the brand/buyer side.

As far as external social strategy objectives are concerned, website integration tops the list, with developing an ongoing dialogue with customers and “listening/learning about customers”, closely following.

While businesses may struggle to create scalable social media solutions, the disconnect between the corporate website and social media conversations will affect strategist’s abilities to get buy-in from stakeholders. A majority of respondents (64.4%) are measuring engagement data, such as comments, fans, followers, and retweets, while only 39.5% are using website traffic data to evaluate a program’s impact. Bringing prospects closer to your website’s point of sale via social media, and then being able to measure that data, will help strategists build a convincing proposition to stakeholders.

What are your social media program objectives? In the comments section, tell us about your plans for 2011 and feel free to ask us any questions about how to execute and achieve your social media strategy goals.