The social media is not being used effectively by the companies in the Middle East, Bayt.com's latest poll, "Corporate Usage of Social Media in the Middle East", revealed Sunday. Majority of respondents (46.8 percent) believe so, the survey showed. Eight out of every 10 respondents (81.6 percent) claim that the potential for social media to damage a company's reputation is one of the biggest challenges to overcome, suggesting that proper education in the medium is essential for success. Aside from the risk of reputation damage, the top three perceived challenges to social media are difficulty in monetizing online presence (11.3 percent), getting the tone of message correct (11.3 percent), and keeping up with feedback (10.5 percent). Other challenges that were cited were the complexity of measuring return on investment and problems with keeping up-to-date with the ever-changing tools and technologies. In fact, a majority (20.7 percent) stated that they believe all of these factors are challenging. However, 12 percent of respondents do not know what may present a challenge for corporate social media involvement. Despite reservations, social media usage is considered to be 'common'in the region, by four out of 10 (42.8 percent) poll takers, and half (51.1 percent) say that their company uses the medium. Almost half of the respondents (47.6 percent) currently follow a Middle East corporate social media presence, and six out of 10 (60.2 percent) believe that there will be a dramatic increase in the corporate usage of social media within a year. Despite the high interest employees have in social media, guidelines for its usage are only provided by 40.2 percent of companies, as opposed to the 45.1 percent that do not issue any. "When asked what they consider to be most important in a successful corporate social media page, more than a quarter of respondents said that they want content that is 'informative and educational'. Companies looking to implement a successful social media strategy should bear this in mind when launching a new page,"said Lama Ataya, CMO, Bayt.com. Other highly-desired features are that a social media page should be 'fun and interesting' (17.8 percent); provide customer service and feedback (14.9 percent); promptly answer all comments and queries (13.2 percent) and that it should be updated frequently (11.7 percent). In terms of the latter, almost a third (29.3 percent) of respondents state that their company updates their social media pages once a day. According to 47.5 percent of the Bayt.com poll takers, social media activity has been largely successful in driving traffic to their company's website, with a further 38.2 percent claiming that they have been successful in converting fans into customers. Along those lines, four out of 10 (43.3 percent) respondents believe that their company's social media strategy is 'excellent', and half say that their company sounds 'friendly' in its online interactions. More companies handle their social media internally than those who outsource (39.1 percent versus 35.6 percent), with most (35.9 percent) assigning the job to a single individual.
