Social media budgets on the up despite the recession

Great news for those in the social networking industry. Apparently 63% of "best in class" companies surveyed by the Aberdeen group, plan to increase their social media budgets despite the downturn. Forrester´s "Social Media Playtime is Over" study has also led to some revealing statistics. For example 53% of marketers plan to increase social media spending and 42% will keep it unchanged.

So why might this be? Well take the example of a large organisation with employees in many countries. They normally have an annual conference where thousands of employees come together to connect with other employees, listen to speeches from senior management, break out into project teams. The costs of such an event are astronmic. Whereas an internal social network would do a similar (if not better) job and could be set up for a fraction of the price.

But this is just one example. Internal social networks lead to improved connection, ideas, collaboration and loyalty amongst employees.

In fact, given the transformative impact a social network can have upon an organisation´s business, we actually think more of a company´s budget should be attributed to social networking . But then we would say that wouldn´t we!