Social media communications in corporations and organsations

Corporations and other organisations are handling the topic of social media communications more and more strategically, with most having moved beyond the experimentation stage.

This is one of the key results identified by the German study Social Media Delphi 2012, for which 860 communications professionals working in companies, governmental institutions, associations and non-profit organisations were surveyed by the University of Leipzig together with Fink & Fuchs Public Relations and Pressesprecher magazine.

Another key finding is that organisations are devoting financial resources into expanding their social media structures: around 39 per cent of the surveyed communicators state that they have special budgets allocated to social media communications, a year-on-year increase of 22 points. Organisations with a longer experience in social media and a larger number of social media activities more often have a separate budget. Similarly, larger companies and listed corporations are better positioned in this regard.

The majority of respondents (64 per cent) expect this budget to increase in the future. Investments focus mainly on the creation and management of contents (69 per cent), as well as on developing communication concepts and overall strategies (54 per cent).

The survey also finds that there are no dominant patterns for the integration of social media in organisational processes: collaboration styles within organisations are described very diversely and in many cases still resemble experimental phases. At just about one in three of the surveyed organisations, social media communications collaboration is rather spontaneous and experimental, and at almost 19 per cent the responsibilities are not explicitly defined.

The majority of respondents report about centrally controlled collaboration routines, while decentralised approaches are stated almost as frequently. This is an indication that collaboration is handled differently at various levels and often several organisational models are combined. Taken from Social Media Delphi 2012, University of Leipzig/Fink & Fuchs PR/pressesprecher

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