How Effective is Social Media Marketing and PR at Accomplishing These Goals?

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Which strategic goals do you expect social media to accomplish for your organization or client?

More than 90% of companies believe that social media is most effective in building brand reputation and awareness. That result is followed closely by goals for attracting website visitors, according to exclusive research in MarketingSherpa’s new Social Media Marketing and PR Benchmark Guide.

Objectives that tend to fall into the category of direct marketing, such as lead generation and sales conversion, are second-tier expectations. You might expect the revenue-producing goals of direct marketing to rank higher than branding during a recession. The conversational and relationship-building nature of social media, however, is more synonymous with PR, which is more likely to help accomplish branding goals.

Improving internal communications is often the goal of companies in the early experimental stage of adopting social media. Indeed, internal communications is a desirable social-media training and proving ground because the risk of exposing confidential information to the public is far less likely to occur in a self-contained environment.

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More Research Data from Sherpa:
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2009 Social Media & PR Benchmark Guide
http://www.sherpastore.com/socialmediabmg09.html