The rapid rising of the social media is raising many questions about how it has been implemented into the corporate world as many studies and researches are trying to investigate this issue. The latest related-study that i want to discuss in this post, was conducted by Grant Thornton and examined how the social media is involved in the companies mix.

The study surveyed 141 senior financial executives (mostly CFOs) that answered 23 question survey. Almost all of the participants (97%) came from a US-based companies and the big majority of the companies (73%) have more than $25 million in annual revenue. Let’s overview the study’s main findings:

The Social Media Value
68% of the respondents do recognize the high value the social media is holding as they think it will be at least an important component in the company marketing efforts (48% important + 20% critical). Additionally, only 5% think that the social media holds some or non value at all.

Social Media Usage In The Next 12 Months
More than half of the respondents (53%) believes that the use of the social media will increase significantly in the next 12 months by their companies. Another 34% believes that it will increase slightly , 11% believes it will remain more or less the same and only 2% predicts it will slightly decrease.

Social Media Risks Concerns
Although 63% have concerns about the social media, they believe that they can be avoided or the benefits are outweighing them. On the contrary, 11% have indicated that they are very concerned and 22% answered that they don’t believe that there are appreciable risks.

Most Important Social Media Risks
Out of the participants that did expressed their concerns, most indicated disclosure of the company’s information as the most important risk. Another important social media risk that indicated by the participants was negative comments about the company.

Confidence About Sensitive Information
It seems that at least half of the participants are confident that sensitive or confidential information is protected on the social media- 50% are confident or extremely confident while only 23% are not feeling confident. 26% answered they don’t know.

Social Media Responsibility
The majority of the participants (54%) think that marketing or public relations are the social media (main) responsibility. More interesting, only 19% answered that their company isn’t using the social media at all, meaning that the big majority (81%) of companies do use this way or the other social media platforms.