Initial findings from a new study presented at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) symposium over the weekend validate what we already know about the importance of social media to businesses: It’s important…

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable to their activities as more customers and influencers use them. Twenty-seven percent reported that social media is a core element of their communications strategy.

But the study, funded by the Institute for Public Relations and Wieck media, also sheds some light on some of the ways and reasons companies are adopting strategies to address social media. The respondents talked about proactive and reactive strategies, and the findings suggest some clear priorities for both.

Respondents reported that the most effective tools for their social media initiatives are currently:

• Blogs
• Online video
• Social networks

Surprising to the researchers was the fact that criteria that measured online engagement for blogs and podcasts were among the least important to the respondents.

However, for online communities and social networks, the top three criteria for evaluating influence do reflect the importance of online engagement:

• Participation level
• Frequency of posting by the community member
• Name recognition of the individual

Furthermore, 51% of those surveyed are formally measuring the effects of their social media initiatives, with a particular interest in how successfully they are engaging with key audiences. They want to understand and, of course, enhance their brand’s reputation (and product awareness, etc.) with those audiences. They want to know how well their own forays into blogging and social video are faring, and they want to know who is writing or commenting about them, how much they are writing and what they’re saying. It’s also interesting to note that near the bottom of the list was traditional media coverage.

This is why it was important for us from the very beginning that our application focus not only on finding and measuring consumer generated content, but also enable companies to engage with the consumers who are generating it.