HootSuite Survey: Businesses Value Social Media But Struggle With Measuring Results

The disconnect remains. Most businesses believe social media is a vital tool for success but have trouble proving it.

Social media management firm HootSuite is the latest to confirm the struggle to show social ROI, releasing a survey that puts the reality in stark relief:

Nearly nine in 10 businesses (88%) believe social media is important to maintain a competitive edge, while two in three (67%) find it difficult to assess the effectiveness of social media activities.

The survey also found that only 40% said their businesses were using social media data to help improve their bottom line. Not coincidentally, 60% said they were challenged to find actionable data.

Harris Poll, which was commissioned by HootSuite to run the survey, pulled those results from a sample of 750 business managers — current and prospective HootSuite clients — in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. They were surveyed between January and October this year; no mention of HootSuite was made during the survey.

[pullquote]Nearly nine in 10 businesses believe social media is important to maintain a competitive edge, while two in three find it difficult to assess ROI.[/pullquote]

HootSuite, of course, believes it can help. That’s a prime motive for why social platform and analytics companies commission such surveys.

“Nearly all survey respondents agreed that social data can improve the bottom line, yet turning that data into something actionable can be a challenge,” HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes said in a release. “Our focus on building an intuitive platform and education solutions is to address this problem and help organizations unlock the rewards of social media across the enterprise.”

HootSuite Launches Agency Partner Program

And HootSuite also announced today that it has created a Global Agency Partner Program to help “agencies educate account teams and stay on the leading edge of social media through tailored training workshops, access to industry leaders and enhanced support specific to the business needs and client delivery model of large agencies.” FleishmanHillard, M&C Saatchi, Lost Boys (part of the DigitasLBi family) and Ogilvy Digital Health are charter members of the free program.

HootSuite created an infographic laying out the survey results in detail: