SmartBrief recently partnered with Summus Limited to survey more than 6,000 of its readers across a variety of industries.

They benchmarked and measured the state of social media usage among businesspeople. The data identified eight prevalent trends that give great insight into the social media behaviors, beliefs and challenges of the majority of businesses today.

#1: Companies Are Still New to Social Media

Most companies (66.5%) have adopted social media in the past 18 months. About half of the companies reported they’ve only been using social media for about a year and about 20% reported they’ve adopted social media practices in the past 13 to 18 months.

The graph above is a great reminder that most businesses are still very new to the social media arena.

#2: Businesses Focus in on the “Big 5″

Companies are focusing their energies on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs. Data suggests that companies focus their time and efforts on the “big 5″ because they’re able to find their customers there.

Unfortunately companies may be missing out on valuable niche groups by not extending their reach to the less-popular social sites. Flickr, for example, has a large audience even though it’s not as popular as Facebook or YouTube.

Based on the graph above, Facebook is the leader in social media platforms; however, Twitter is close behind in the minds of business professionals.

#3: The 2-Year Confidence Mark

It takes time for companies to incorporate social media effectively. The data identified a 2-year mark where businesses begin to gain confidence in their social media activity.

More than 25% of the companies using social media for 2 or more years say the tools and platforms have been fully integrated into their business model. In addition, more than 50% say they have a well-developed or fully developed social media strategy.

Note the 2-year mark in the graph above. This is where the majority of companies start feeling more confident in their social media strategies.

#4: Companies Are Broadcasting Versus Connecting

Brand-building is currently the primary purpose for business social media usage. However, the research showed that most companies are using social media to broadcast information versus using it for two-way communication.

This is unfortunate. Many companies are missing the opportunity to build stronger relationships by listening to their clients or customers, instead of doing all the talking.

As indicated in the chart above, the most popular social media goal among the respondents was to "increase awareness and interaction with our brand."

Unfortunately, most companies still continue to broadcast messages more than they use social media tools to engage and connect with their customers and prospects. Perhaps this will begin to shift as companies become more confident in their social media activity.

#5: Businesses Turn to Internal Sources for Social Media Support

Communications, advertising and marketing agencies are the leading adopters of social media. However, an interesting finding of the study showed that agencies are not the preferred source for social media support. Most of the companies surveyed have opted to create and execute their social media strategy using internal resources.

The marketing, communications and advertising agencies were the clear early adopters of social media, but businesses have been reluctant to turn to these agencies for social media support.

The resistance to look to an agency for support may be a partial reason for the 2-year "ramp-up period" highlighted in the chart above.

Perhaps the learning curve could be shortened if companies looked to the experts and early adopters for support as they build their overall strategy.

#6: Social Media Adoption Obstacles

Lack of management support and confidentiality concerns top the list of obstacles to social media adoption. There was a clear lack of management support for those companies who have not yet adopted social media. 33% of the respondents pointed out they weren’t the decision-makers and 14.7% stated “management resistance” as an obstacle to social media adoption. To add to this, 33.1% pointed to “confidentially issues” as a reason for not adopting social media.

As we’ve seen in numerous studies this last year, companies are still struggling with employee social media usage and how to manage it internally.

In this chart, it's interesting how 33.3% of the respondents saw their lack of decision-making ability as an obstacle for social media integration in their business. Likely, the majority of the people responsible for social media management are not in a traditional management role.

#7: Lack of Social Media Measurement

Less than 15% of the businesses using social media are measuring return on investment. Over 33% are not measuring return on investment at all. It seems that many businesses struggle with identifying what to measure, how to measure and how to interpret the data when they are able to gather results.

Among those businesses that are measuring their social media activity, the focus is on usage and incoming traffic. Interestingly, most are not using traditional business metrics.

As this chart shows, only 14.7% of respondents answered "yes" to the question "Is your organization measuring your return on social media investment?" This shows that businesses know they should be using social media, but they don't necessarily understand why.

#8: Companies Lack Confidence in Their Social Media Strategy

While 60% of respondents say their companies are using social media, there’s low confidence in their social media strategies. One of the most interesting findings in this report was how the respondents rated their social media strategies. Only 14.2% described their strategies as “very effective,” while a low 7.3% described them as “very revenue generating” on average.

Based on this graph, it's clear that most of the companies surveyed didn't have confidence in their social media strategy.

Based on the fact that most companies are not tracking their success (as seen above) and most are trying to build their social media strategy internally, it makes sense that most are lacking confidence in their overall success in the first few years.

The full “State of Social Media for Business 2010” is available here from SmartBrief.

Now it’s your turn. Where does your company stand versus the social media benchmarks mentioned above? Are you confident in your social media strategy? Share your experience and comments in the box below.

Add that the technology is changing all the time.  It can seem impossible to keep up with all the tools, software, techniques, etiquette, and social media best practices.

It’s hardly surprising that people are looking to social media consultants, agencies and contractors to take on their social media activity. But should you? Let’s explore this.

The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Social Media

Getting outside help is a good idea, especially if it keeps you from making blunders which could negatively impact your image and reputation. It can also help you short cut the route from absolutely square one to gaining the benefits and return on investment that you look for.

There is a danger though in that many companies are not just looking for help but offloading all their activity onto an outside agency who is not integrated into the company but still representing them in social media.

This might seem strange to see coming from a social media consultant. You would think perhaps that I would be all in favor in social media gurus getting more paid work. Actually, I see it as a problem and I think it is the consultants job to help clients draw the line.

Consultants, I feel, should focus on training you or your in house staff, or helping you recruit someone with appropriate skills who can join the company and learn its culture and processes. In my view the consultants job is to get the company to the point where the consultant is hardly needed any more, apart from to be on call when there is a question or issue that needs their help, or when there are new developments and changes that need to be brought to the clients attention.

Get help, coaching and advice? Yes, of course. Would I suggest you Outsource everything? No.

Now, don’t get me wrong, not all outsourcing is bad, and I am fully aware that your time is likely precious, scarce and in demand!

Points to Consider:

• External people do not have all the facts – There is a limit to how much you can train someone who is outside your organization and more than likely sat in an entirely different building. If they are constantly checking information and requesting answers, how much time are you going to save?
• You could be locked in or even held hostage – The deeper you get into outsourcing the harder it might become to extricate yourself and take it in house. Can you be sure that if the relationship with your outsourcer goes bad that you can continue as if nothing has happened? You might find your following is not your audience at all, or that with a few clicks they can make you look very bad indeed.
• Outsourcers are not empowered to make decisions or take action - If someone contacts someone within your organization with a problem they can usually get the issue sorted pretty quickly. An outsourcer on the other hand might have limited options or be little help outside of their “script”.
• Company culture should be communicated accurately – It is hard to communicate a company culture that you are not part of.
• Internal staff have more motivation – When you work for a company you feel more ownership and loyalty than someone who is outside and detached.
• Industry terms and details can confuse outsourcers – Customers of the company, media contacts and real niche geeks will all use the industry jargon and shorthand. How much of this can the outsourcer pick up, and will they be convincing?
• A large benefit of social media is networking – If someone is only there to look like they are engaging a niche, then your company will not get the full networking benefits that social media provides. Do you hire an actor to go to industry events and exhibitions for you?
• You might risk your brand on the communication of a freelancer - Can your outsourcer be trusted to say and do the right thing when it counts?

OK, it might seem like I am being overly negative and pessimistic, but there are some areas that are pretty safe to outsource provided you monitor and manage the situation well:

What Can You Safely Outsource?

1. Content formatting and editing – You might not be the best when it comes to grammar and design, but have something to say. That’s fine, get someone to take on the polishing provided you communicate using your own voice.
2. Friend Requests – There is nothing wrong with having an assistant filter out the obvious junk from your following, lists, friend requests, networking contacts and so on before you give them the final approval.
3. Research Content – You might find an outsourcer can find information faster and higher quality.
4. Bookmarking Submissions – Repetitive tasks where you are not dealing with people can be handled by an assistant or software, providing you stick to the service rules and only contribute good valuable content.
5. Audio and video editing – If your multimedia abilities start and end with hitting the big red record button, no worries – get a professional to tidy, enhance and add effects. They can advise you on how to make the best of what you have too.
6. Content uploads – Your time is best served adding to your bottom line, not watching progress bars!
7. Brand monitoring – Rather than sit watching reports and streams of search results, have someone else monitor your brand mentions and jump in to respond as and when necessary.
8. Transcriptions – If you work best with your voice rather than writing, speak and record and get your content transcribed. The audio can be used as a podcast and the written version can be used in blog posts or as social media responses.
9. Blog and fan page housekeeping – Deleting spam, checking links, handling competition entries, and so on, can all be given over to an assistant.
10. Software and IT management - Get someone with technical skills to look after your software upgrades, data backups, security, and so on and you will be able to relax knowing it is all taken care of.

Bottom line: Avoid outsourcing your relationships.

Where outsourcing works best is when a personal response is not necessary, when anyone can follow a simple system or where the task is taking your work and enhancing it. It is at its worst when the experience feels fabricated, deceptive or dismissive.

So what is the answer?

In my view the best answer is to either train someone in house in social media with ongoing support, or bring someone in with the appropriate skills, a passion for your product, service or niche, and make them part of your organization with important contacts on speed dial for when anything out of the ordinary happens.

Do you outsource any part of your social media activities? Perhaps you perform outsource services? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below…

The pace is fast and this video is full of useful information. Be sure to read the list of takeaways below.

Here are some key takeaways from this video?

1. Listening is so important. The unstructured data you get from listening gives you more than surveys. Be sure to check out his tutorial: Grow Bigger Ears.
2. Establish your presence: Create passports to establish a presence.  Go where the people’s voice is rather than drive traffic to your site.
3. Monitor sales marketing and content marketing that drives leads instead of monitoring ROI.
4. Integrate social media into your customer support, sales and marketing.
5. Chris’ Twitter strategy:  12 to 1 ratio: promote 12 times more stuff from other people, and it pays to mix business with pleasure on Twitter
6. Chris is working one new books called Social Media 101 and and How Human Business Works and why this is important in today’s business world

What about you? What do you think about this video interview? How does listening on social media help your business? Please share your comments below.