While more than 70 percent of organisations around the world are now active on social media, a recent report by KPMG International finds that businesses in the emerging markets are surging ahead of those in mature markets in this area.

Chinese, Indian and Brazilian respondents were almost 30 percent more likely than their counterparts in the UK, Australia, Germany or Canada to say that their organisation utilised social media within their businesses.

“The emerging markets seem to be quickly finding that social networks offer a relatively low-cost opportunity to leapfrog the competition in developed markets,” notes Malcolm Alder, a Partner with KPMG in Australia’s Digital Economy practice. “In some cases, inefficient, unreliable or monitored email systems are forsaken in preference of the faster and unfiltered, interactive social network channels. In others, a lack of alternatives may be driving businesses to adopt social networks within the enterprise.”

Based on a survey of almost 4,000 managers and employees in major markets around the world, the research also found that organisations tend to underestimate the benefits of social media.

For example, only 13 percent of those with no existing social media program thought that ‘going social’ would influence their organisation’s public profile or drive productivity gains, versus around 80 percent of those with an active social media program who said they had either personally seen or organisationally measured these benefits.

“With more than 80 percent of respondents citing benefits, it seems clear that harnessing the benefit of social media should be an organisational imperative,” adds Sanjaya Krishna, a Partner with the Digital Economy Practice at KPMG in the US.

“Instead of seeing social as an abject risk, executives would be well advised to balance the risks of engaging in social media against the opportunity cost of not participating.  Make no mistake, there are risks to being engaged and no one should enter the world of social media without having thought through the associated governance model.”