Site design company Webs' recent marketing poll indicates that businesses plan to boost social investment this year, but they need to up the ante with social content marketing in order to see results.

The results of a recent poll from site design company Webs indicate that 69 percent of businesses (and counting) are using social campaigns. As investments rise, more than half of marketers say social media has not met their expectations – and it may be because of their failure to invest in fresh social content.

Social media marketing usage is pervasive. Forty-one percent of the minority who don't already have social media campaigns say they will implement social outreach within the next three months. Plus, 77.5 percent of current social marketers plan to increase investment in 2011.

At the same time, 59.4 percent of social marketers say they aren't thrilled with social ROI. Why then, one might ask, are they willing to invest more? According to the survey, marketers believe the more time they spend learning and investing in social media, the better the results.

Webs theorizes that a main reason brands aren't seeing better ROI is because they fail to publish engaging social content on a regular basis. More than one-third of marketers (36.5 percent) say they post new social content once a week or less, and 10 percent publish social content less than two times per month.

As Brafton has reported, social users want fresh content from brands. Fifty-one percent of Twitter users and 38 percent of Facebook fans say repetitive or boring content is the main reason they have stopped following businesses on social channels.

These figures support Webs' statement that, “Regular, active engagement is a big part of success with social media. If [social marketers] put more time into their campaigns, it might positively affect results.”

Of course, lack of time to create content is cited as a major obstacle to effective content marketing, according to HiveFire's Content Curation Adoption survey. Marketers might consider outsourcing their social media marketing content to ensure they produce consistent and engaging social posts.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.