Social Media Customer Leaders | Harvard Business Review

Inexpensive and efficient, social media can give customers more extensive explanations of their offerings than traditional marketing and advertising can.

In a new Babson Executive Education survey of over 900 global executives, managers, and individual contributors, researchers identified Social Media Customer (SMC) Leaders as the companies where employees “strongly agree” with the survey statement: “our organization has embraced social media (like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook) to improve its responsiveness to customer needs.” At the other end of the spectrum are SMC Laggards, who strongly disagree with that same statement.

Leaders say they are putting more sweat equity into retaining customers, and social media is one way to keep in touch with clients: “In these uncertain times our company has invested more in client relationships and building stronger client teams,” noted one respondent.

Additionally, aggressive adoption of social media can be a signal that an organization is more dynamic and innovative in the first place. For instance, SMC Leaders are two-and-a-half times more likely to strongly agree with the statement, “My company puts more emphasis on innovation and growth today than before the recession” (43% vs. 17%).

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Author H. James Wilson is a Senior Researcher and Senior Writer at Babson Executive Education (BEE) in Wellesley, MA. At BEE he is a contributor to an ongoing Social Media research study led by Dr. PJ Guinan. Wilson has written for numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, and HBR Online where “Innovation Teams Lack Data, Structure” appears.