Study: Global Businesses Are Anti-Social in a Social Media Age
New worldwide research by Satmetrix, the Net Promoter software company, has found that the majority of organizations of all sizes across B2C and B2B are blind to the opportunities and threats of social media.
Highlights of the Satmetrix worldwide social media study include the following:
- Businesses are blind to the threats and opportunities of social media:
- Thirty-nine percent have no social media tracking in place at all.
- Fifty-one percent of B2B have no tracking compared to 22 percent of B2C companies surveyed.
- Fifty-five percent of companies ignore customers who provide feedback via social media by having no process in place to respond. This increases to 69 percent for B2B companies compared to 42 percent for B2C.
- Sixty-seven percent of companies do not measure or quantify social media; increasing to 75 percent for B2B companies; For those that do have some form of quantification, 56 percent just count the comments and followers. Only 4 percent have any form of sentiment analysis.
- Sixty percent of businesses do not have an integrated social media strategy (either do nothing, track, or follow up only).
- North America leads the way with 43 percent of North American companies having a follow up process compared to about 25 percent in other regions.
"Businesses recognize the need for a social media strategy, however, many are challenged in putting an effective strategy in place," said Richard Owen, CEO of Satmetrix, in a statement. "While 77 percent of consumers post about products, 67 percent of businesses have no means of measuring what is being said, and less than one in 20 have any insight into the sentiment of what is being said. This is both a huge threat and a massive lost opportunity. Not only are companies running the risk of losing customers by not addressing their issues shared online, but they are also walking past the opportunity to capitalize on positive comments made on the social Web."
"SparkScore, our breakthrough social media Net Promoter Score and subsequent software solutions will change the game," continued Owen. "It enables companies to understand and act on the sentiment of content shared online. It will empower companies to harness the power of social media."
Earlier this year, Satmetrix released the SparkScore social media measurement solution, which applies the same NPS methodology of recommendation behavior, which identifies detractors, passives, and promoters of a brand, to social media sentiment. With SparkScore, businesses will be able to measure the fluid and unstructured comments and opinions made about their brands online.
In the upcoming weeks and months, Satmetrix will be releasing a series of SparkScore solutions. The first, free edition is currently live in beta version and a limited number of invited customers have been given access. It is scheduled to launch at the Net Promoter Conference in London in June and will measure SparkScores of major brands across select industries. Using Metavana's rigorous and reliable sentiment engine, SparkScore will analyze the fluid and unstructured comments made about brands across social media sites (Facebook, Twitter and more), as well as review discussion sites and applicable private customer forums, and assign a SparkScore to each brand. Companies will be able to access their overall SparkScore and compare it to their industry's benchmark and best and worst scores on a weekly basis.
Following this first release, Satmetrix will be embedding its SparkScore solutions into its Net Promoter in the Cloud software applications to enable companies to generate more powerful social media insights and drive action across their organizations to increase business results.