Social Business Mini Survey Results: Measuring the Value Is on Your Minds

Image courtesy of Flickr user HeavyWeightGeek.

Over the last month we conducted a mini survey on our site to ask our readers and visitors what areas within the topic of social business they were most interested in learning about.

The results are displayed in the charts below:

Question 1: What social business topic are you most interested in learning about? (Check all that apply.)

As you can see from the figure, the top choice was measuring the value of social business initiatives, followed by top case studies for social business and, third, deriving useful analytics from social.

Each of these top responses reflects a desire for learning and understanding more about social business: how to measure, who is doing it well, and what kind of information social can provide to the organization.

The issue surrounding measurement has been of particular interest to businesses over the last year, as companies that are considering or have already instituted a social initiative have been grappling with how to figure out a return on investment or other success metrics. We plan on covering measurement and other important issues in our Spring 2013 Report on Social Business.

Question 2: In what function are you most interested in seeing examples of social business? (Choose one.)

As illustrated by the chart above, respondents chose the function “leadership/strategy” as the area of greatest interest in seeing examples of how social is being put to use. This is noteworthy, as that is an internally facing function, which has received less attention than the more discussed externally facing uses of social, such as customer relations or sales and marketing. This response could then signal an increasing desire among businesses for new ideas and guidance in implementing social in internally facing areas such as leadership and strategy.