Survey: Most companies won’t expand social media staffs in 2013

Feeling swamped by social media? You’re in good company.

Fully 65 percent of social media staffers juggle other responsibilities, while only 27 percent focus exclusively on the emerging platforms.

A Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey suggests a digital divide between a class of deep-pocketed companies with the money to hire teams to manage social media, and a majority of smaller organizations that pile social media obligations atop the duties of already busy employees.

The survey of 2,714 online respondents indicates that many are swamped and don’t have enough time for social media, something that matches what Adam Brown, principal of adMAGINATION, has observed.

“People who already have three or four or five things on their plate feel frustrated that they have to do this, and that whenever this happens they’ve got to drop everything and get into it,” says Brown, former executive director of social media at Dell.

Though some survey participants work for multinational teams of 14 to 20 people, one harried respondent wrote, “I’m a one-woman show, so I do everything.”