A third of comms leaders are training teams around social media, Ragan research says

Each year, Ragan’s Communications Benchmark Report offers industry-specific insights into what areas and practices are driving the biggest wins for communicators leaders — and posing the biggest challenges.

Of the comms pros who took the survey this year, over half (54%) said that they manage their organization’s social media strategy. Though this number is slightly down from the 57% who said they manage social media in last year’s report, it is still a reminder that social media practitioners are not just marketers. On the contrary, 70% of respondents said that social media channels remain their most effective medium for external communications.

Nearly a third (29%) said they would be offering their comms team more training around social media over the next year, too. With organizations struggling to decide whether the big platforms such as TikTok, Meta, and Twitter are still healthy comms platforms in the wake of numerous scandals, we expect this number to grow.

Meanwhile, 65% of respondents said they will also train their comms team more on measurement and analysis and 77% said they gauge the effectiveness of comms efforts around social media engagement such as retweets and shares, while 65% still gauge follower count as a telling metric. It will be interesting to see whether more training on social media increases the specificity of inputs and outcomes measured across social media strategies in the coming year.

We will discuss these results during Ragan’s Social Media Conference at Walt Disney World, March 15-17. Those attending this event will enjoy three days of social media training, networking and celebrations at Disney’s Swan and Dolphin Resort with sessions led by communications and marketing leaders at Google, Pfizer, NASA, Domino’s, Sony and more.

Register now to learn and celebrate with Ragan at Disney during the 10^th anniversary of our Social Media Conference!