A new survey into the effects of social media marketing reveals that companies with the “greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement” benefited from revenue rises of 18% over the last year, while those that least engaged dropped 6% on average.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study by Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group is the first of its kind to look at how engagement with consumers through social media correlates with financial performance.

Social media channels taken into consideration for the study were Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Wikis and discussion forums.

The brands considered were the 100 most valuable ones as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking, including the top 10:
1. Starbucks
2. Dell
3. eBay
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. Thomson Reuters
7. Nike
8. Amazon
9. SAP
10. Yahoo!/Intel (joint)

According to the study results, the companies that scored well have dedicated teams that are active in various social media channels.

A spokesman for Wetpaint is reported as saying:  “The closer any company is to its customers, the better. It’s hard to argue with the ability for social media to create such proximity. In this day and age, companies should feel much more comfortable investing in social media. The correlation to results is so clear.”

So does this mean that every company should have at least one person dedicated to engaging with customers via social media? What are your thoughts?

Tags: facebook, social marketing, twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Business, SEO / Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Posted by Leon You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.