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​Hootsuite report reveals Australian companies struggle with social media content creation

The social media platform’s recent survey shows businesses are not leveraging social media channels to their full potential

The most pressing challenge for businesses using social media is content creation, a recent report by Hootsuite found.

The survey, which included more than 100 executives and management from various industries found the main challenges to be content creation, social media measurement and content distribution respectively across multiple social channels.

When asked about the top three objectives behind using social media, over 60 percent cited increasing brand awareness as the organisation’s key objective, followed by increasing brand loyalty (13 percent) and increasing sales (12 percent). The study further revealed that 87 percent of respondents recognised the competitive advantage that social media provides for their businesses, with 61 percent looking to increase social media usage moving forward.

Facebook still takes the lead as the number one social media platform (29 percent) for companies to post content, followed by Twitter (16 percent) and Instagram (15 percent).

Increasing brand awareness is the dominant key object for most organisations using social media, the report found. Meanwhile other organisations use social media mainly to increase brand loyalty (13 percent) or increase sales (12 percent).

Despite these findings, over half of the respondents said they do not actively use a social media management system, which underscores the need for more education and resources to help Australian organisations tap into the full power of social media. And while social media is a prime way to reach out to a target audience, only 1 per cent of organisations use the platforms to understand audience behavior

“Australian businesses understand the benefits and competitive advantages that social media provides, however continue to struggle with fully capitalising on this trend,” Hootsuite’s director of growth and marketing, Roger Graham said. “There’s great opportunity for companies to embed social media as a fundamental component in their marketing efforts, and Hootsuite can help in this journey.”

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