Business Trends in Social Media Marketing. Chief marketing officers are looking more closely at returns from social marketing initiatives, according to a survey conducted by consumer ratings and reviews provider Bazaarvoice in conjunction with the CMO Club. The survey was conducted in October 2010 and sought information from 175 CMOs of business-to-consumer and business-to-business companies on their use of social media and their plans and expectations for the coming year.
In 2010 87% of the CMOs surveyed had engaged in company blogs, 86% in brand communities and 79% in Facebook. Although the proportion using customer reviews and ratings as a marketing tool was slightly lower (73%) 59% of this group reported average or significant ROI for this activity.
When asked which social activities resulted in the highest ROI, 15% of survey respondents identified Facebook as the best. Ratings and reviews sites ranked second (14%) with Twitter and LinkedIn also being nominated by over 10% of respondents. When Significant and Average ROI are combined Company/brand community and Company/brand blg out perform Facebook and these are the types of social media marketing activities in which fewest respondents are non-participants. The other statistic to note in this chart, which comes from eMarketer's analysis which is is the high proportion of "Don't know" answers over all types of activity. Read more on Social Activities.