Companies understand the need to engage with social media and increase their involvement with it, but many still have difficulty establishing a viable business case for adopting social media, according to survey results from Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based business research company.

In Aberdeen’s 2011 Marketers’ Agenda, a survey of hundreds of executives from companies of all sizes and a variety of industries, the surveyed business leaders also revealed that they are struggling to integrate social media in their existing marketing mix. In a related report, Social Media Marketing—Friends, Links, Tweets, Lend Me Your Ears! (PDF), Aberdeen’s experts offer these suggestions:

• Develop a viable business case. Aberdeen experts report that the generation of high-quality sales leads is the major benefit of social media participation for many best-of-class companies. This factor strongly supports a business case for establishing a social media program. With increased sales and additional customers as the goal, companies can more easily engage top executive support for social media initiatives.
• Devise a formal social media strategy. Companies should develop a formal social media strategy to guide their participation in blogging, networking and interacting with customers online. Companies with no formal strategy should be willing to adopt best practices from other industries and industry segments.
• Devote sufficient resources to social media. Companies must allot enough budget and personnel to social media initiatives if these programs are to produce any valuable results.
• Use social media monitoring, engagement and analysis tools. These tools are used by 52 percent of best-of-class companies to assess how the company is perceived by customers online. Monitoring and analysis services let companies determine which online conversations are most important and which customer opinions should be integrated into the company’s marketing and outreach efforts.

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