Expanding Social Presence Can Have Positive Impact on Business Operations, New CompTIA Study Finds

According to a CompTIA’s Social Business: Trends and Opportunities study which surveyed over 400 business and IT executives,  expanding your social presence can have positive impact on business operations.

The top five, key benefits cited by the study include:

• Better communication with customers, cited by 61 percent of responding companies
• Cost savings (51 percent)
• Brand positioning (49 percent)
• Real-time customer satisfaction (48 percent)
• Potential lead generation (43 percent)

Additional study findings include:

• A full 82 percent of responding organizations have a Facebook presence, 68 percent have a Twitter profile and 68 percent, a LinkedIn page
• Less than one in five companies are currently using social enterprise tools
• Confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt consumer-driven outreach make the social landscape one that still requires definition and justification for many companies
• While the marketing staff has been the primary owner of social activity to this point, IT departments will play a critical role in the further development of the social enterprise

Our .02 cents:

While the CompTIA study examined the social media activity of  very large, enterprise businesses with multiple departments, many of the study’s findings are relevant to small business, especially the finding about “confusion over terminology and hesitation to adopt consumer-driven outreach” are sentiments we run into from time to time.

And of the top 5 benefits cited, we found one particularly exciting revelation from this study: companies who engage in social do find that the conversational nature of social media allows them to “carry on discussions with their customers, strengthening the relationship and gleaning insights on products, services and satisfaction.” That is one of the core benefits social brings to the table and usually a key benefit most often overlooked or dismissed by organizations who still feel as the study describes as hesitation and reluctance with the social media landscape.

Mayra Ruiz Mcpherson

Brand Journalist and Digital Strategist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson is founder of Ruiz McPherson Communications (RMC), a marketing ingenuity practice based in Herndon, Virginia. Mayra — who also founded and launched the online career community SocialMediaJobsDC.com — often presents various digital and social media-focused topics tailored to business owners and senior-level marketing managers. She also instructs a number of courses, workshops and training sessions as well as provides private, on-site training on social media tools and strategies.

In between professional engagements, Mayra guest blogs and contributes content regularly to a number of publications both in and outside the Washington DC metro area. Mayra is also the editor of The Better Social Business Blog, "Pet Tech" columnist for the Virginia Maryland Dog Magazine, contributes an “e-Trends” column to the Loudoun Business Journal and is founder of the Loudoun Fairfax Local Bloggers Meetup group which mentors and helps local bloggers network, learn and exchange ideas.