(PRWEB) - Red Rocket Media, a specialist content marketing agency in the UK, surveyed marketing professionals across a wide range of sectors and found that 32% of businesses cited ‘lack the time’ as their biggest social media challenge, closely followed by 28% who cited ‘creating original content’. Others included: deciding what to say (17%), measuring ROI (13%) and engaging with customers (10%).
“The results from this survey very much echo the message we are hearing from our own customers” says Matthew Hopkins, Managing Director of Red Rocket Media. “As businesses embrace social media marketing they are very quickly realising that to get results, you need to invest a serious amount of time in creating original content which will engage your readers: time, the majority of them just do not have.”
When asked about their main social media objective, 35% cited ‘increase brand awareness’, followed by ‘form deeper relationships’ (30%) and ‘generate leads’ (15%). 10% stated ‘increase website traffic’ as their main objective with the remainder being split between ‘enhance search engine rankings’ and ‘create buzz’.
Hopkins added: “More and more companies are cottoning on to the power of social media when it comes to increasing brand awareness. Valuable content such as topic-related news articles connects people and spreads like wild fire as people re-tweet it, share it and comment on it. As long as you publish high quality, original content, there are simply no limits to the reach your brand can achieve on social media.”
Whilst the biggest challenge faced by businesses is a lack of time, it is, however, encouraging that so many are still committed to social media as a long-term investment. Over 50% of those surveyed are now spending 1-3 hours a week on social media activities, 17% are spending 4-6 hours and a surprising 15% are spending over 10 hours.
As far as social media budget is concerned, 41% will be allocating more budget to it in 2012, compared to 49% who plan to spend the same. The rest intend to reduce their spend which is likely to be attributed to the fact that those businesses who do not have the time to properly execute their social media plans naturally aren’t seeing results.
One of the main objectives of the survey was to gain a better understanding of the challenges businesses face when it comes to their social media activities. The findings have formed the basis for a white paper, written by Red Rocket Media, which addresses the five biggest challenges in turn and showcases how content marketing can provide an all-encompassing solution.
