Social media marketing may have trouble shedding its “Wild West” image — which is a shame, given how it’s being used. Even though it feels unstructured and wide open, the reality for most companies is that the use of social media is carefully managed. According to a new study by MarketingSherpa, 68 percent of the businesses surveyed have either a formal or informal process for monitoring target audience dialogue about brands and the competition. Sixty-six percent have informal processes regarding defining objectives for social media space.

This is not a shoot-from-the-hip approach to marketing.

Of course, social media marketing remains far from rigid. In the four categories explored by MarketingSherpa, the set of respondents indicating a formal process (defined as being performed routinely) doesn’t reach 30 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, you can see that most companies want some sort of predictability. Less than a third responded that they have no processes for three of the four categories, with the deployment of social platforms based on the evaluation of target audience use the lone exception (at 42 percent).

For the IT industry specifically, MarketingSherpa offers the following:

While marketers in the computer hardware and software industry are more likely to monitor what their target audience is saying about their brand and competition on social media, marketers in the education and healthcare sector are much more likely to have a formal, routine process for other social marketing best practices.

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[Source: MarketingSherpa]