Survey: corporate social media risk perception

According to a survey by Grant Thornton, Social media risks and rewards, 71% of the executives who participated said their enterprise was worried about possible risks posed by social media, but only 36% reported having social media training in-place in their organization. The survey also had an even divide between corporate executives that were worried about the risks of social media and those that did not feel that social media offered “appreciable risks” to the organization (13% for both groups).

The survey represented 111 leaders from a combination of public and private, small to mid sized corporations. The focus of the survey included the following: the value of social media, social media policies, worries about identity theft and data security and analytical tools and tracking.

Corporate risks identified in the survey

• damage to brand reputation
• disclosure of proprietary and/or confidential information
• corporate identity theft
• legal/regulatory and compliance violations

The survey also discovered that only 33% of the companies had a social media policy to govern communications with the channel. Additionally, 27% stated that their enterprise had no social media policy and did not plan to develop one.

More than half of the group (55%) felt that social media will be an important element of their corporate marketing efforts going forward. Two-thirds (66%) of the executives plan to see their company’s use of social media marketing and communications increase over the next 12 months.

SOURCE: Grant Thornton, Social media risks and rewards, September 2013