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The responsibility for small business social media strategy, execution and measurement is spread out in many organisations.

Three in ten CEOs of small businesses are responsible for managing their organisations' social strategies, compared to bigger firms where only 15 per cent of CEOs are that involved, according to new research by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and global marketing and technology agency LBi.

Their survey found 13 per cent of respondents said the responsibility for social media activities was not assigned to a specific individual or team within their organisation.

The survey results come at a time when businesses are becoming increasingly social. Over the last year, 55 per cent of organisations had become more social in order to drive their marketing activities, the research found.

Brand awareness is a key objective with social media, with small businesses also focusing on using social media to communicate with their target audience.

Small business social media challenges

Hannah Bewley, research manager at the IAB, said the survey revealed large and small businesses in the UK might be more social, but they are still struggling with resource, budgets and confidence.

However, the biggest challenge is organisations' difficulty in measuring success. Nearly three in ten respondents said they did not know how social media success was measured in their company.

Ms Bewley commented: "The survey revealed some companies are attempting to measure performance, with a quarter undertaking benchmarking against previous campaigns and 17 per cent reporting that they capture ROI."

Software provider Awareness published its State of Social Media Marketing report in August, showing more budget is being allocated to social media programmes, but proving a return on investment remains a challenge.

Six in ten respondents said they found it difficult to show executives ROI from social marketing programmes, which is crucial in increasing future investment. 

The survey found the majority of marketers looked at growth in fan and follower numbers as the key metric for ROI, while a large proportion measure an increase in traffic to owned media.