If social media marketing is king, then experts are needed to polish his crown and advise him on how to reach his citizens, but organizations may be hiring knights and maids who are ill-equipped to protect the throne. Despite the expertise of today’s social media specialists and managers, many companies neglect to find the right support, with 42 percent of companies only employing one expert to staff the social media team.
With 69 percent of social media budgets expected to remain the same in 2013, content marketers may consider rethinking their strategies and outfitting new armor in order to increase the success of their campaigns.
Organizations strive for relevant campaigns
A recent report by Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions seeks to explore the current state of the social media profession in terms of how organizations are coping with the need for innovative and relevant campaigns, revealing that 65 percent assign employees with social media tasks on top of other job responsibilities.
With employees struggling to complete daily tasks alongside social media efforts, organizations are experiencing difficulty in creating custom content as well as in measuring their efforts. Only 5 percent of survey respondents reported being very satisfied with how the company measures social media activity. Eighty-nine percent revealed that they were only somewhat satisfied or not satisfied at all.
What’s in the way? A lack of time, a lack of people
Additionally, lack of time and lack of manpower were cited as the largest barriers to measuring social media marketing efforts, with 65 percent and 63 percent, respectively. Brafton recently reported that two challenges – lack of budget and producing enough content – came in as the top concerns for B2B marketers in a study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute.
Outsourcing could calm stormy struggles
The results of the two surveys reveal inevitable results – organizations are struggling in their content marketing efforts, particularly when it comes to producing enough engaging content to fill blogs, social media platforms, websites and more. To ameliorate struggles and support the reign of a well-known king, marketers can consider outsourcing some of their efforts to third-parties who can generate quality content on a regular basis while providing adequate and careful measuring of performance. The king’s advisors may need some support in keeping the kingdom clean.
