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Organizational Barriers to Social Media Adoption

February 4, 2009 6 Comments

MarketingSherpa has published a new chart showing the organizational barriers to social media adoption.

marketingsherpa-chart

It is not surprising to see that the top 2 barriers are a lack of knowledge and the perceived inability to measure ROI.

When it comes to a lack of knowledgeable staff, the MarketingSherpa team touched on one of the dangers organizations face when searching for social media hires:

A danger to the effective adoption of social media as a marketing strategy is the large percentage of those who consider themselves knowledgeable – but have no social media experience.

This is an issue that is regularly discussed in the blogosphere and on social networks such as Twitter.  We could have an entire conversation on this alone.  [One step these organizations could take is sending their staff to a cool one-day conference where they would receive intensive keyboard-level training (shameless plug)] :)

As far as the inability to measure ROI, the desire for organizations to measure ROI will never go away.  Again, this is a topic which comes up often in the blogosphere and on social networks.  But, a few months ago, Jason Falls explained why it is hard to measure the ROI of social media:

The problem with trying to determine the ROI of social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

So, what are your thoughts regarding this chart from MarketingSherpa?  Do you think it’s accurate?  Does it represent organizations that you or someone you know belong to?  Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

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Social Media, Social Media Strategy
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About Justin Levy

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  • http://continuingedofanatc.wordpress.com Bill White

    Justin-

    The bottom four categories – although separate – also seem to fit within the “lack of knowledge” domain.

    Social media can be utilized in many ways with little expense. Management often is resistant because they don’t understand the concept. Take Twitter for example – a very powerful tool. It is what got me to this post. When people first look at Twitter, it may be real difficult see how this has any marketing relevance at all. But as you utilize it, the value becomes apparent. Technical complexity again points to a lack of knoledge. Not being relevant to market – every market has a market so to say and people in all walks of life use social media tools – you just have to find them.

    The overall theme seems to be general lack of understanding how social media can be adopted into business.

    Bill

    Bill White’s last blog post..Don’t Disregard Continuing Education Courses in Category D

  • http://continuingedofanatc.wordpress.com Bill White

    Justin-

    The bottom four categories – although separate – also seem to fit within the “lack of knowledge” domain.

    Social media can be utilized in many ways with little expense. Management often is resistant because they don’t understand the concept. Take Twitter for example – a very powerful tool. It is what got me to this post. When people first look at Twitter, it may be real difficult see how this has any marketing relevance at all. But as you utilize it, the value becomes apparent. Technical complexity again points to a lack of knoledge. Not being relevant to market – every market has a market so to say and people in all walks of life use social media tools – you just have to find them.

    The overall theme seems to be general lack of understanding how social media can be adopted into business.

    Bill

    Bill White’s last blog post..Don’t Disregard Continuing Education Courses in Category D

  • http://www.netspray.com Greg Manning

    I am relatively knew to all the workings of social media and internet marketing but in my opinion organizations are just un-aware of the importance of this medium.

    There are many people out there that don’t understand the new elements of marketing. And instead of learning about it and taking advantage of it they push it aside and say it isn’t relevant or important.

  • http://www.netspray.com Greg Manning

    I am relatively knew to all the workings of social media and internet marketing but in my opinion organizations are just un-aware of the importance of this medium.

    There are many people out there that don't understand the new elements of marketing. And instead of learning about it and taking advantage of it they push it aside and say it isn't relevant or important.

  • http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/teaching-english-in-taiwan-experience-life-in-taiwan-as-an-english-teacher-1423243.html Teaching English in Taiwan

    Nice one. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.

  • http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/teaching-english-in-taiwan-experience-life-in-taiwan-as-an-english-teacher-1423243.html Teaching English in Taiwan

    Nice one. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.