Spredfast Launches Enterprise Benchmarking Report - Social Media Explorer
Spredfast Launches Enterprise Benchmarking Report
Spredfast Launches Enterprise Benchmarking Report
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My friends at Spredfast released a new benchmark report last week they call the Spredfast Social Engagement Index. It’s a report on the state of corporate social programs based on analysis of 154 Spredfast customers and their use statistics and data that is intended to help other companies know where they stand.

Essentially, Spredfast is showing you a broad, anonymized look at its customer base to establish a level of benchmarking — this is what sophisticated companies are doing in social — for you to compare your brand to. While I’m never fond of anonymized user data from just one platform or analytics perspective, there’s some logic here. Spredfast customers are going to be higher-end, higher-budget brands that are invested in social. The companies that “get it” are worth looking at as, well, benchmarks.

Among the 154 companies, Spredfast found:

  • Three levels of maturity were delineated: Companies activating social, expanding social and proliferating social.
  • The analysis revealed 49 activating, 45 expanding and 60 proliferating.
  • The farther along that activating-expanding-proliferating continuum, the more active and impressive the metrics of success.
  • The average number of approved social media users (posting on behalf of the company) was 29, though it was 53 among Proliferators and just 16 among the other groups.
  • The majority of users of Spredfast’s platform (an SMMS platform) were labeled as “Editors” illustrating the use of the tool is more at the tactical level, which was mildly surprising to me.
  • 74 percent of the publishing activity in Q2 of 2012 occurred on Twitter. Facebook accounted for 24 percent, LinkedIn less than 2 percent and YouTube less than one percent.

Spredfast Social Engagement Index ReportFrankly, most of the insights and recommendations from the report will make far more sense to Spredfast users. The taxonomy and structure of the tool (using Groups, Streams and other labels that don’t have easily translatable terminology in other tools) will prevent a lot of brands from really knowing what the report is referring to. But it does do a nice job of extracting some recommendations and implications for brands that is worth reviewing.

Some of its assertions include:

  • Clicks happen and more so that other user actions. This may indicate that driving people from your social channels to your website for conversions, calls-to-action and the like is more readily accepted by mainstream consumers than those in the social echo chamber indicate.
  • Facebook produces a higher level of engagement for Spredfast’s clients, but Twitter is use more in terms of messages sent. This is likely the result of most brands seeing Twitter as a broadcast rather than engagement channel. But at least there are now some metrics to wrap around that.
  • Brands that have multiple channel engagement strategies drive more engagement. I think this a cause-effect thing. Brands that are using multiple networks aren’t necessarily driving more engagement. But brands sophisticated enough to use Spredfast and use more than one or two channels for engagement are going to have sophisticated content strategies. It’s about the strategy, not the number of channels.

What interests me about Spredfast’s report is not this report. It’s the fact they’ll be trending this information over time. Again, I’m not a big fan of one platform’s anonymized data. But when you consider you’re looking at enterprise brands with a level of financial support and strategic focus for social media marketing, it’s interesting.

Get your copy of Spredfast’s report at their website. It’s free.

Then come back and tell us what insights you found from the report that were useful in your program. The comments are yours.

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About the Author

Jason Falls
Jason Falls is the founder of Social Media Explorer and one of the most notable and outspoken voices in the social media marketing industry. He is a noted marketing keynote speaker, author of two books and unapologetic bourbon aficionado. He can also be found at JasonFalls.com.

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