Survey: 65 percent of social media pros juggle other duties

Sixty-five percent of social media staffers do that job on top of other responsibilities, a Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey reveals. Of those who do it exclusively, 82 percent work on teams of three or fewer people.

Most in the field are facing stagnant budgets in 2012 and 2013, participants reported.

The survey sheds light on an emerging field that most communicators and executives take seriously but which many are too swamped to give their full attention.

In the online survey of 2,714 social media professionals, a picture emerges of organizations that are still coming to grips with the media that have upended relationships with the public and placed unprecedented power in the hands of consumers.

Titled “Structuring a Social Media Team,” the survey drew an array of participants. Respondents from the corporate world made up 58 percent of the total. Nonprofits amounted to 24 percent, while 7 percent came from government agencies or departments. About 11 percent answered “other.”

The survey digs out benchmarking data that communicators “can present to the approvers and their bosses, so they can get what they need: a higher budget, more people,” says Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications.