How important is social media to business?

Massively so, says new research from Econsultancy and Adobe, which discovered that two thirds of businesses (67 percent) say that social media is now integral to their marketing, and 66 percent agree that it is an essential part of their overall business strategy.

In their Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Managing and Measuring Social report, Econsultancy and Adobe noted that:

• 64 percent of businesses are using social for brand awareness, as well as marketing campaigns (44 percent), content marketing (37 percent) and customer service (25 percent)
• Twitter and Facebook are the number one social networks amongst brands, with 86 percent using them respectively, ahead of YouTube (59 percent), LinkedIn (54 percent) and Pinterest (37 percent)
• Two thirds of businesses (67 percent) believe social marketing needs to be more rooted in data, but 41 percent say they lack the effective tracking capabilities to accurately measure ROI
• Around three-quarters of respondents agreed that measuring the impact of social is “very difficult”

The key findings of the report have been captured in this infographic.

(Source: Econsultancy. Social speech bubbles via Shutterstock.)