27% of AsiaPac brand executives inefficient in social media strategies

Better get your act together soon, as sociability is expected to contribute 65% to a brand’s overall reputation in three years.

According to a release, becoming social is an imperative for brands today, and while many are embracing the digital revolution, substantial improvements are yet to be made to build a brand with a distinctive social identity, according to a new global Weber Shandwick study in partnership with Forbes Insights.

“Socializing Your Brand: A Brand’s Guide to Sociability” offers brand and communications executives with a starting point for developing their own best-in-class practices when creating an authentically social brand. The research was conducted online among 1,897 senior executives from high revenue companies across 50 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

According to the study, global brand executives believe that sociability is growing rapidly as a contributor to a brand’s overall reputation, from 52 percent today with a projected estimate of 65 percent three years from now. Yet, a large majority (84 percent) report that their brand’s sociability is not yet up to world class brand standards, despite the fact that nearly all of them (87 percent) say they have a social media brand strategy.

APAC brand executives are significantly more likely than executives in other regions to report difficulty quantifying social media results/gauging ROI (27 percent vs. 19 percent in North America, 17 percent in EMEA and 14 percent in Latin America). In fact, this is APAC executives’ number one barrier to using social media more extensively. APAC is also the most likely region to cite lack of talent to effectively implement social media as a barrier, which could be a reason for or byproduct of ROI challenges.