Content and social marketing show signs of maturity in 2012

Marketers are placing both social marketing and content marketing among their top business priorities this year, as both channels are set to mature in 2012.

Some 70% of marketers cited social as their top priority for 2012, followed closely by content marketing, cited by 59%, according to the State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas for Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012 report by Awareness.

Most encouraging is the approach that marketers plan to take in the coming year. Having already established and grown their social presences on the major channels (Facebook and Twitter), they now plan to extend their social media strategy to include previously overlooked sites such as YouTube, foursquare and Tumblr.

Content is playing a major role in the growth of social. Pairing both channels has enabled businesses to boost interactivity on their sites with social sharing buttons, with shared content proving ready-made fuel for social marketing efforts.

Along with this enhanced approach from companies comes a fresh focus on active social media management to improve lead generation and sales from social media.

Said Brian Zanghi, CEO of Awareness: “We expect less-experienced marketers to follow their visionary peers, adopting established practices as they move along the maturity continuum.”

Staffing remains one of the key challenges, according to the report. Most of the 320 businesses surveyed employ between one and three people to monitor their social media marketing campaigns, and nearly half (45%) claim to struggle to find qualified talent to manage most of their new media activity.

We’d love to hear if these findings fit with your own experiences and plans for social media activity. Is your business planning to ramp up its strategy this year? Will you be making any additions to your social media team, or are the company purse strings still restrictively tight? Please post your comments below.

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