Recently, Ragan, a PR publisher, partnered with NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions to produce a survey that details the social media profession in the corporate world, non-profits, and government.
This survey was created to answer the most pressing questions about those who work in the social media world. In order to map out the landscape of the profession, they surveyed 2,714 respondents online, focusing on communicators, marketers, public relations pros and others whether they have someone who focuses exclusively on social media, or if their social media duties are duties on top of their regular work.
The survey has a focus on PR professionals above all, as that is Ragan’s audience, but there are still lots of great insights to be had.
Fast Facts: Who Took The Survey
- 28% of respondents were from organizations that had more than 1,000 employees
- 23% of respondents were from organizations that had less than 25 employees
- 49% of respondents were from organizations that had less than 1,00 employees
As you can see the majority of respondents came from mid-sized companies.
The overall findings can be divided into five key areas.
1. Staffing
65% of respondents do their social media on top of their other work and nearly 83% work on teams of three or fewer.
Degree and experience are the most important qualifications experienced when hiring social media staff for companies, with experience weighted much more heavily than a degree on it’s own.
2. Measurement and Monitoring
An overwhelmingly 69% of social media leads are dissatisfied with their measurement and monitoring efforts. Many say that they lack the time to track data or are not even sure what to measure. Maybe some of these tools will help!
3. Budgets and salaries
Always a touchy subject, only 28 percent of social media leads saw their budgets increase this year, while 69% stayed the same. Salaries for social media managers or directors showed wide variation with 21% earning in the $25k-$35k range and 22% earning in the $65k-$90k range.
4. Platforms and efforts
Only 13% of respondents describe their efforts as advanced. Most social marketers consider themselves at an intermediate level. Another 23% describe themselves as “newbies.”
Facebook is the most popular platform with 91% of respondents having a presence with Twitter (88%) and LinkedIn (69%) close behind.
5. Ownership of social media
More than 70% of respondents say marketing is involved in social media, with public relations (69%) close behind and corporate communications (49%) a distant third. And even more interesting, as you might suspect, is which departments social reports to. It is all over the place (see below).
I’ve highlighted a few charts that caught my eye and I think you would find interesting. But this is just a small percentage of the full report.
To read the full report and browse through more stats and charts on the structure of social media roles, click here.