Spredfast Releases Industry's First Social Engagement Index to Track Trends in Corporate Social Programs

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Spredfast, a social business software provider for corporate social media management, today released the industry's first Social Engagement Index Benchmark Report to define the current state of internal and external engagement across social brands and serve as a baseline to help indicate movement and progress with future data reports. The data from 154 Spredfast customers, which was captured within the Spredfast social media management platform and analyzed by market research firm, Mindwave Research, reveals how companies are currently structuring and orchestrating social media programs within their organization, as well as how they are reaching and interacting with public audiences.

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The study focused on analyzing the following seven key indicators of internal and external social engagement:

• Number of users – The total number of people within an organization set up to access social media campaigns within Spredfast
• Number of groups – Groups of social programs within a company; typically segmented by brand, geography, business goal or team
• Number of messages – The total amount of messages published across all channels
• Total activity – Company-wide publishing activity across the various social networks and accounts
• Current network size – The total number of Fans, Followers, Connections or Subscribers a company has across all social network accounts
• Total reach - The potential number of social impressions a company reached through social activity on a certain social network
• Total engagement – The total amount of any interaction that occurs with a company's social media accounts

Key Findings from the report include:

• Companies are expanding social engagement opportunities through increased publishing and activity. While a few companies published more than 155,000 messages that garnered over 250 million interactions, the average company published 4,924 messages resulting in an average engagement of 2 million interactions during Q2 of 2012.  As companies embrace more people within their social programs and actively produce more content, the more opportunities their audience has to interact and engage with the brand, increasing the need for more targeted and compelling messaging to various audience segments across channels.
• Social media is no longer one person's or one team's job. On average, 29 people are participating in social media programs within a social media management system (SMMS) across 11 business groups and 51 social network accounts. Some companies have more than 300 active users publishing to more than 700 social network accounts. As more people become active on a company's behalf across more social channels, brands have an opportunity to focus on internal orchestration to more effectively and efficiently manage social efforts from one location.
• Social media is allowing companies to communicate directly with and reach an "opted in" network like never before. Companies have an average social network size of 1.8 million people with an average potential social reach of 47 million impressions over one quarter. Brands are acquiring Fans, Followers, Connections and Subscribers at an increasing pace and reaching these people through content impressions that appear in social network news feeds. As an organization's network size and social reach continue to increase, so do their opportunities for building brand awareness, increasing online reputation and converting new customers.
• Publishing is heavier on Twitter, though engagement on Facebook is higher. Companies are publishing an average of 50 messages per day on Twitter as compared to 16 messages per day to Facebook. However, Facebook yields 549 engagement interactions for every message published while Twitter yields 60 engagement interactions for every message published. Additionally, clicks exponentially outperformed other types of engagement such as Likes, Comments, Retweets or Mentions on Facebook and Twitter.  This signals an opportunity to better determine which social networks perform best for a given company with consideration into the individual company objectives, and industry and audience.
• Corporate social programs are multi-channel efforts that require employees to participate in a variety of roles. Companies, on average, are utilizing three social networks and assigning up to five levels of roles and permissions to employees to allow the right people to focus and engage their audience in the best way. This means companies are expanding social beyond simply the marketing or customer service teams, and engaging internal subject matter experts in social activity to deliver relevant, interesting content to audiences.

"Companies are increasingly leveraging technology to manage social program activities from one, centralized location, allowing more people to be active on a company's behalf, leading to more conversations on multiple channels. However, this report shows that there is still work to be done in this area," said Jim Rudden, Spredfast CMO. "As social programs become more strategic and complex, this report aims to track not only the trend towards centrally managing a company's social presence, but also the most effective ways to engage social audiences."

Report methodology

The data sample used in this report covers the second quarter of 2012, from April 1 through June 30. Data was collected from a representative, anonymous sample of 154 Spredfast customers via the Spredfast Social Media Management System. Market research firm, Mindwave Research, conducted an analysis of several key metrics within the data to develop an Engagement Index based on key identifiers of internal and external social growth.

The Spredfast Engagement Index is based upon seven variables representative of internal organization and structure and external audience and engagement. These variables include: number of users, number of initiatives, number of messages published, audience, current network, and total reach.

For more information and a copy of the full report, please visit www.spredfast.com/engagementindex or http://www.slideshare.net/Spredfast

About Spredfast
Based in Austin, Texas, Spredfast provides social media management software that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their social media programs at scale. Spredfast enables more people, in more places, to engage in more conversations from a single platform on supported social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare and the blogosphere. Some of the enterprise and agency adopters on board with Spredfast include AARP, Coty Beauty, AT&T, HomeAway, Jason's Deli, Whole Foods Market, ING Direct, Warner Brothers and AGAIN Interactive. For more information, visit www.spredfast.com

Media contact:
Brittany Edwards
[email protected]
512-538-0460 x1206

SOURCE Spredfast