As we heard often during last week’s sold-out Social Shake-Up Show, acceptance of social media as a useful business tool is far from a given in some quarters. A new report from The Conference Board, provided exclusively to PR News Pro, reiterates this point as it concentrates its focus on the C-Suite. The report will be released later this week.
Socially Minded: Convincing the C-Suite of Social Media’s Benefits argues “some companies and their leaders are skeptical of the value social media can bring.” This situation applies to C-Suites in companies generally, it says, although the B2B sector is particularly prone to this type of thinking. The reason is B2B “has a harder time demonstrating concrete transactional benefits as a result of social media.”
One shortcoming with this type of thinking, the report notes, is that social media should be seen as more than transactional. Social media offers revenue-generating opportunities in: recruitment; brand building through thought leadership; and reputation enhancement via improving customer service efficiency. It’s incumbent upon social media advocates to promote social media to the C-Suite using the language and metrics of business, the report contends. Some these include brand buzz, net promoter scores, share of voice, tonality of coverage, or trust.
“Social media too often is considered by the C-suite to be simply a communications and marketing tool. The constant focus to demonstrate ROI reinforces that position,” the study’s author Alexander Parkinson, senior researcher, The Conference Board, tells us. “It’s the responsibility of social media managers to become more sophisticated in the way they showcase the overall benefits of social media.”
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