GFK Romania: 22% of companies active in social media are using specialized agencies

Cristina Blanaru Marketing, Social Media, Studies

GfK Romania made a study that analyzed the way social media activities are organized in companies and how formalized they are.

A fifth (22%) of the companies that made social media activities used specialized agencies, mainly because of their experience in the field (49%) and of their efficiency (11%).

The companies that didn’t used specialized agencies didn’t do that because they didn’t have available budgets (48%), because they considered it isn’t the case to use this channel (20%) or because they considered they have people that know how to handle social media within the companies (17%).

Although more and more companies are using social media specialized agencies, they don’t consider this enough, acknowledging the importance of a liaison person between their own company and social media agencies.

Even if they outsourced social media to an external agency, around 3 out of 4 companies that did that also had one or more inside people in charge of social media

Traian Nastase

Online Project Manager GfK Romania

56% from the companies that had inside their own companies people in charge of social media involved around 1-2 persons. For 44% of those companies, there were involved 3-4 people, a fact that can suggest also that there aren’t clear defined responsible to take care of those activities.

21% of the companies that used social media in 2011 used independent blogs. The bloggers used for campaigns weren’t random, with the main criteria in choosing them being the number of blog visitors (for 70% of the agencies that campaigned on blogs) and themes approached in articles (66%). Other criteria were notoriety and image on the market (for 55% of companies) and recommendations from the agencies (44%).

GFK Romania’s study follows the evolution of social media investments in 2010 and 2011 and makes predictions on 2012. Collected data showed that investments in social media promotion are increasing year per year, with more than 50% of companies that used social media in 2011 investing increased budgets compared to 2010. Moreover, in 2012, 56% of companies active in social media intend to dedicate even bigger budgets; 6  out of 10 companies that did social media will increase their budgets this year by 25%.

As share in marketing budgets, 37% of companies redirected towards social media between 1-15% from the budgets. On the other hand, there are many big companies (over 250 employees) that redirect 16-25% of their budget for social media, while small companies (under 50 employees) usually redirect around 5% of the budget.

“How companies are using social media” study offers info on social media channels used by companies while promoting themselves or their products, how much they invest in those channels and how they measure the effects of the campaigns. The study was made online, on askGfK panel of respondens (410 people with power of decision in what concerns the communication activities, that ran or intend to run campaigns in social media during the next 12 months).