Notes from Nothing

Are European companies more clueless about social media?

Readers of this blog may have noticed this past week that I wrote of two posts on how business – both large corporations and small businesses – either don’t get social media or don’t get how to measure social media ROI. But as I’d mentioned earlier today, the new world of work is global in nature. How do companies in other parts of the world fare?

So, I found this recent study by German think tank – Brand Science Institute – enlightening in that it made similar conclusions (a tad more dramatically though) on how effective social media marketing is in Corporate Europe. Here are a few conclusions from that study, conducted over a 7 month period in companies spread across 12 countries, 563 marketers, and 52 brands in Europe.

Click through the presentation below for more.

81% of companies DO NOT have a clear social media strategy

87% of companies had to correct their social media expectations

Only 11% have clearly defined social media guidelines and more…

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  1. Mario Sundar

    Don’t think so. I think to a certain extent, the companies in the US also look at short term wins while beginning to use social media. That said, there’s probably a better understanding and tolerance of social media thanks to the hype cycle as well.

    Deni (previous commenter on this thread) points out that UK may be an exception to the rule in EMEA. I’m guessing the other countries may soon catch up as well.

    Thanks for your comment!

  2. Mario Sundar

    Interesting. I guess UK tracks more closely to the US in terms of social media behavior.

    Would love to see further data on that. Feel free to share any presentations or surveys you have on that topic.

    Thanks for commenting, Deni!

  3. Deni Simeonova

    Interesting survey, thanks for sharing.

    And this is the reality indeed, except for the UK.

    I just did an experiment – if you try to find jobs in the EU job portal http://ec.europa.eu/eures using “social media” and searching in all 30 countries you’ll get the following results:

    – 3569 jobs in UK
    – 26 jobs in Belgium
    – 12 jobs in Germany
    – 2 jobs in Sweden
    – 2 jobs in Ireland
    – 1 job in the Netherlands

    That’s all.

  4. Lucas Lu

    Hi Mario!

    This is a great post and very interesting post about current status of social media strategy among European company. After going over the slideshow, I had a feeling that the majority of the company wants quick and profitable strategy that will generate real profit in a short amount of time, while not spending enough time and resources to moderate it. Again, they all exemplified some typical stereotypes about social media, which is fast turnover, profitable, and, most of all, viral. Having said that, I think companies across N.America seem to have a better understanding in terms of designing and executing social media strategies as a part of overall marketing strategy.

    Do you think this is indirectly, or directly, related to the fact that not many start-ups are European-born and thus lack examples of successful social media strategies for big companies to follow?

    Cheers!
    Lucas

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