Brands need more social policies, less piecemeal

A Cisco study released this week reveals that businesses are increasingly using consumer-based social media tools as a central part of their marketing and communications, human relations, and customer service departments.

Based on interviews between April and September 2009 with 105 participants from 97 organizations in 20 countries around the globe, the study found that 75% primarily use social networking, with 50% using extensive microblogging, and they all acknowledged that a conversational approach is key to their future survival and growth.

However, the businesses also related that they were struggling to make their activity strategic and integrated, with only one in seven having a formal process to coordinate activity, and one in five with relevant policies in place.

As Nick Earle, Senior VP for Cisco Services, says “The rise of the connected consumer is driving a market shift in the enterprise, creating “people-powered business” where social networking tools and collaborative technologies are the propeller of the next-generation of productivity and bringing about a fundamentally different leadership model. Companies who will succeed in embracing the tremendous power of social networking will be those who design a collaborative IT architecture capable of supporting the use of these technologies and mitigating the risks they pose”.

It’s a topic we’ve talked about before on this blog , and over on the WOM UK blog I recently highlighted Coke’s new social media policy, which proves that the complexity can be made simple.

A major part of our work as an agency has become internal consultancy, skills transfer, policy development and secondment to help businesses such a 3 Mobile and Cancer Research UK take effective and structured ownership of their social strategies. We’re learning a lot from the process too, as we increasingly understand the specific challenges and structures of different sizes and types of organisations and industries in fully integrating a word of mouth approach.

Loathe as I am to join the bandwagon of 2010 soothsayers, I am convinced that this kind of collaboration between agencies and brands will be a major growth area for word of mouth marketing this year.

Do you agree? Watch Nick Earle discuss the study findings in more detail below.

Heads up to ReadWriteWeb for the link.

Brought into the world on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts, Stats & Research.