Are corporations looking to spend more on social media or less? Plenty of brands are still sitting on the sidelines looking in at social networking sites and user-generated content, but how many are going to start investing in it as part of their marketing strategies?

Two recent surveys give conflicting answers. First up is the rosy view of the third annual Online Customer Engagement Report, produced by online publisher E-consultancy and digital agency cScape, which took a look at how a degenerating economy will affect customer behaviour and psychology. It says that more businesses are going to invest in social media as a way to focus on customer engagement, though fewer than half said they actually had a strategy to do so. (more…)