The placement of social media teams within a company's structure can affect the success of Web 2.0 campaigns, it has been suggested.

A new report from Forrester Research indicates that the bike wheel-based hub and spoke model for organising companies for social media is used most, with this structure seeing a cross-functional group representing multiple stakeholders positioning itself in the centre of the company.

This group or hub then helps to facilitate the sharing of resources and communications via "spokes" to people at the edge or tyre of the business.

Some 42 per cent of social media marketers at businesses with at least 250 employees said they were organised in this way, with 29 per cent operating a distributed model without a centralised unit and 20 per cent opting for a "tower" structure with all activity taking place at a central hub.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research said that he recommended the hub and spoke model as the most effective way of organising social media activity.

"The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialogue with the market -and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing," he remarked.

Businesses may also want to look at how social media activities are organised at the top levels of their companies - according to a recent study by UBERCEO, few Fortune 100 chief executives are engaged with social media channels such as Twitter and blogs.