Everyone thinks they need a social campaign, and Forrester Research has now done the research to prove it.  Forrester found that social media is in the top five priorities of CMOs.  And a lot of executives have personal responsibilities for social media, with one in five CMOs telling Forrester that they are personally accountable for social media.

However, knowing that you've got to implement social media into your marketing is very different than actually doing it.  Only half of the 99 executives surveyed by Forrester said that social was fully integrated into their marketing.  And these are for large companies, not smaller companies without the resources to hire multiple staff for their marketing team.

But no matter what the size of the company is, social media cannot be ignored.  Forrester's research has found that 59 percent of all online consumers visit a social media site at least once a week, and approximately one third of them have liked a company's Facebook page or followed the company on Twitter.

While social is an important aspect of any company's marketing, it cannot be the only asset deployed.  We'll get into what social can and cannot do in future posts.