Social Media: It’s not about the sales

We’ve all witnessed the recent explosion in social media. Many of us have also seen some companies dig their heels in and resist making use of social media. In my experience and observations, one of the prime reasons given by such companies is a lack of tangible value. There is a general feeling in such companies that social media just doesn’t have that much to offer.

I recently came across a survey conducted just last month on this topic. The results of the survey show that many businesses currently employing social media platforms don’t have a very high opinion of the benefits. The overwhelming majority of the respondents attribute less than 5% of sales to social media efforts (directly or indirectly). A more general question asked participants to rate how effective they felt their social media efforts to be on a scale from 1-5. Over 80% answered in the 1-3 range. The kicker for me was that in light of all this, most of the companies in the survey consider themselves Ecommerce companies. If satisfaction with the results is so low, why do these companies use social media at all?

I don’t know which companies participated in this survey, but it does shed some light on the motivation for using social media from a business perspective. Social media seems to be more about branding and PR than anything else for many businesses such as the ones who responded to the survey. Is this simply because some companies are better suited for (or just better at) gaining sales via social media than others? That may well be the case. I find it unlikely that so many companies that employ social media would be willing to do so if they saw so little value gained from it, but this survey implies that many do just that.