Oregon Businesses Increase Use of Social Media      March 08, 2010 Author: Tom Eiland | Comments (0) Related Lines of Business: Public Opinion & Market Research  Marketing Communications

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One third of Oregon business organizations are using Facebook and other social networks for customer engagement. CFM found use of social networks for business has more than tripled in 13 months.

These are key findings from an online survey conducted among Oregon Business magazine subscribers last month (February 2010).

In the survey of 846 Oregon business decision makers, CFM found 34 percent are using Facebook and other social networking sites to engage customers. Use of social networking has increased 34 percent since December 2008, when CFM and Oregon Business conducted a similar survey. In 2008, just 10 percent were using social networking.

The 2010 online survey found another 18 percent say their organization plans to use social networking in the future, but 48 percent have no plans to use social media.

Larger companies are more likely to incorporate social networking in their marketing plan. Forty percent of companies with 50 or more employees use social media now. Among companies with 49 or fewer employees, 29 percent use similar online tools.

Growth of social media for business is hot, but budgets for these marketing tools are modest. Most companies are testing the waters rather than heavily investing in social networking.

When asked about how much they budgeted for social media in 2009, 76 percent of the businesses said they spent less than $10,000 for the online efforts, 14 percent allocated $11,000 to $50,000 and 6 percent spent in the range of $51,000 to $100,000. Just 4 percent spent more than $100,000.

Of those currently using social networking for customer engagement, 31 percent plan to spend more in 2010 than 2009. However, 60 percent don't plan to increase social media budgets and 9 percent say their investment will drop.

Nationally, Forrester Research forecasts budgets for social media will nearly double between 2010 to 2012 ($935 million to $1.649 billion) and almost double again between 2012 and 2014 ($1.649 billion to $3.114 billion). By 2014, Forrester predicts 21 percent of all advertising dollars will go to digital marketing.

Learn more about CFM Research services and CFM Marketing Communications.

Read about all of CFM's 2009 national awards for social media.

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