A new report finds that social media remains an important factor in business, yet ROI and conversions from social media remain disappointing.

The respondents in the survey from Social Media Examiner overwhelmingly reported (92%) that social media is an important strategy for them, with 88% reporting increased exposure and 78% reporting increased traffic as a result of social media endeavors. 

And even though social media is important as a marketing strategy, only 38% of the respondents said they were able to measure ROI from social media. Just over 40% of the respondents said their Facebook marketing was effective, while just as many were uncertain about Facebook efforts.

The most popular platforms were:

• Facebook—used by 94% of the respondents
• Twitter—used by 68% of respondents, which is down from 76% last year
• LinkedIn—used by 56%, down from 67% last year
• Instagram—used by 54%, which is up from 44% last year
• Snapchat—used by only 7% of the respondents; however, for respondents with over 5 years’ experience in social media marketing, the number increased to 12%

Time investment is a factor in social media use:

• Only 6% of respondents reported spending 40 or more hours per week on social media efforts, but this group was more likely to be on Snapchat (25% of this group as opposed to only 3% of the group spending 1-5 hours per week on social media).
• The respondents spending less time on social media tended to concentrate their efforts on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social media use planned for this year was reported as:

• Facebook: 68% of respondents plan to increase posting frequency
• Instagram: 63% plan to increase posting frequency
• Twitter: 56% plan to increase posting frequency, which is down from last year
• LinkedIn: 55% plan to increase posting frequency
• Snapchat: 23% plan to increase posting frequency, which is up 16% from last year
• 42% of respondents want to learn more about Snapchat

Other social media trends found were:

• Facebook leads in paid social media, with over 90% of respondents using Facebook ads on a frequent basis.
• Just under 25% of respondents reported using Instagram ads, which is twice the amount from last year.
• Visual content is the most commonly used social media content type at 85%, followed by blogging (66%), videos (57%), live video (28%) and podcasting (8%).
• 75% of respondents plan to increase use of video content, while 61% plan to increase live video use.