Image: Facebook

There's not much more to say about social media. It is impossible to imagine life without the new media - whether in the private or business sphere. But how much has social media actually arrived in corporate communications? Who controls usage, and what has changed over the years? What are the challenges?

Last year, the first working group for social media in B2B communication explored these questions for the sixth time and dedicated a survey to the development of social media.

Country comparison

Austria also participated for the first time - understandably, a new focus of the study was on the comparison between Germany-Austria.

The study was distributed by the Austrian Dialog Marketing Association (DMVÖ) and the association's B2B Expert Group. A total of over 550 people were surveyed in Germany and Austria, 197 in Austria alone. It became clear: Austria is still lagging somewhat behind the Germans. First of all, 71.6% of the companies surveyed use social media - compared to 90.7% in Germany.

Against a strategy

In Austria, companies rely much less on a social media strategy than German companies. At 11% of respondents, clearly more companies have decided against a strategy than in Germany, where the figure is 4.1%. In Austria, as many as 9.2% of companies have not even thought about a social media strategy, while in Germany the figure is just 2.1%. When it comes to non-use, three main reasons emerge: Too few available resources (50.6%) rank first; 48.3% of respondents believe social media activities do not contribute to  business success; the third reason given is too much time (47.1%).

Strategic operations

Social media monitoring plays a smaller role in Austria than in Germany: Only 34.8% currently monitor their activities - in Germany, by contrast, it is almost half of those surveyed. For them, defining KPIs and monitoring activities is essential for strategic channel deployment.

Basically, it can be said: The smaller the company, the less likely it is to use social media monitoring. In Austria, people rely primarily on Facebook (23.9%); in Germany, only 18% of companies use this channel. In Austria, Twitter is used less (10.7%), while in Germany, 15.2% of companies tweet.

Differentiation of the channels

The use of Xing, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ is almost the same in both countries.

The differentiation of the channels is difficult to recognize. This fact suggests a direct connection with the non-existent social media manager. Nevertheless, some trends show that Xing is primarily used for recruiting, YouTube and LinkdIn for new customer acquisition, and Facebook for existing customers. Overall, about four hours of time are spent per channel per month - with the exception of Facebook, where significantly more time is invested. If one wants to turn one's gaze toward the future, it seems that, at least in Austria, they do not really want to change course: Only 50.3% of companies are planning to increase their use of social media; in Germany, 74.8% are counting on an increase in usage.

No real change of course

Austrian companies see little need for action in terms of increasing budgets or resources.

There are no differences when it comes to questions about a social media manager - in both Germany and Austria, only around 30% of the companies rely on their own manager or on support from external agencies, and the same applies to target groups for social media activities. Companies surveyed see challenges primarily in resources and content generation. It seems, the authors of the study write, that after an initial strong wave of the use of social media in B2B, the optimization phase has now begun. Almost all messages are still played on all channels in the same way. However, there is a trend toward video, i.e., moving images instead of text or pictures. As a conclusion of the study, Norbert Lustig, board member and head of the B2B Expertgroup of the DMVÖ, explains: "It is probably no longer a question of whether, but how Facebook and Co can be optimally used by B2B companies.

Source: www.mnews.medianet.at