This week, we spent an interesting morning at Bloomberg HQ in London for a Social Media Benchmark event with the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

With speakers including Thomas Brown – Head of Insights at CIM, Josh Graff – EMEA Marketing Director at LinkedIn and Dara Nasr – Industry Head at YouTube UK, it was a great opportunity to delve deeper into the insights and discussions around how businesses are using social media. It was a great event with lots of stats to bring back to the office.

So, who’s doing what? The CIM’s research shows that 71% of UK businesses are using Twitter, although just over a quarter are saying they are ‘just experimenting’ with social media.

Company investment in social media in 2011 was on the increase with 2012 set to grow even more rapidly. Over half of organisations who took part in the research say they are planning to improve social media skills in 2012 by investing in employee training.

Key points we took away: Experimentation is great, but without using the relevant analysis tools available you’ll never be able to measure your success. Social media is a dialogue – it’s more about listening to customers than selling them things.

Even with the global social media boom going on all around us, brands are only just scratching the surface… #SMBenchmark for more information