A new study launched today about the relevance of social media within businesses has shown that although marketers are aware of its potential, activity in this area is seen as something to be concerned with in the future.

Agency group Creston Plc talked to senior marketing professionals working in companies with at least 500 employees, discovering that even though 88% of respondents believed that social media activity will impact brand reputation at some point, only 14% of respondents agree that this is a current issue. This somewhat blasé attitude in turn trickles down to other parts of the business, such as product development, new customers, staff attraction/retention and share price. It could be a result of a lack of awareness of what to actually do, or how to put things into action, that results in social media being put on the back-burner.

A lack of ownership internally also doesn’t help, 50% of those interviewed saying that marketing teams should take care of social media, while 48% placed it in the hands of PR (though it would have been interesting to know how many would have said it should be a joint effort).

This uncertainty in the first instance is made worse by the fact that it appears to start at the top of the business, with two thirds of respondents believing that the Board does not understand social media. This is no surprise, but means that 58% also think that the Board chooses not to support it actively.

With no clear direction from either one department or from senior staff, we find that 60% of those taking part in the study have no current social media strategy for their business. This is a vicious circle of sorts, with everyone involved knowing that social media will at some point become important, but no one taking responsibility for it or taking the time to educate those that could change the way it’s perceived internally.

Further still, there was also a somewhat unclear response to whether social media was even relevant to any department outside of marketing.  Only 24% of respondents believed that social media has any relevance to customer service for instance, showing that though awareness might be up, putting social media into action appropriately is far from the norm.