Most respondents don’t rate their companies very highly, according to early indications from our self-assessment survey, How Social Are You? More than half think they are social media ‘innocents’ and less than a quarter consider themselves ‘advanced’.

There is a high degree of consistency on what is important to achieving competitive advantage through an organisation’s use of social media:

• understanding the impact of social media on marketing activity and Supporting/reflecting brand personality (for both 89% agree or strongly agree);
• being aware of what’s being said and being able to change in response to the challenges/opportunities (86% agreed or strongly agreed to both);
• being willing to respond and being willing to engage with what is being said, as well as creating and communicating clear policies for staff (all 82.5%)

However, there’s a big mismatch between what is thought important and how good people think their organisations are.

These are only early indications based on a small sample but anecdotally, fits well with what we have seen and heard from companies. What about you?

The survey continues to run, so if you are involved in social media on behalf on your organisation and have not yet completed it, please do so (it will only take 10 minutes). The more data, the better for all.