Companies of all shapes and sizes are using social media to make new contacts, interact with their customers and, ultimately, drive new sales.
But as eCRM Guide reports, a new study finds that those tangible benefits must be weighed against the security risks inherent in such an unstructured and highly collaborative environment.
According to the study (PDF format), nearly 90 percent of respondent companies in India, Spain and Brazil are using social media despite the inherent security risks while the U.S., Canada and Australia are lagging at the back of the pack with between 60 percent and 70 percent uptake, according to the survey 1,000 executives at companies in 17 different countries.
The U.S. is among the countries least inclined to embrace Web 2.0 applications such as social media and content-sharing tools to drive sales and brand awareness, according to a new survey commissioned by security software vendor McAfee.
Meanwhile, businesses of all sizes in Brazil, Spain and India are actively integrating Facebook, Twitter and a variety of online collaboration apps into their customer relationship management and marketing campaigns, a decision that’s helping them grow their revenue but also creating a lot of expensive security headaches along the way.