Does the bad news outweigh the good in this survey of executives regarding social media? You be the judge. I already gave my answer in the way I phrased the question.

First, the good news: Most executives think having a social strategy is important for their businesses.

In a May survey from Jive Software and Penn, Schoen and Berland, 78 percent of executives believe social media to be somewhat or very important, eMarketer reports.

Now, the bad. Only 27 percent of those executives are making social media a priority. About half of the remaining respondents say it’s necessary, but not at the top of their lists. The rest say it’s unnecessary or don’t know.

Those results match up pretty well to a May Forbes Insights poll of U.S. and U.K. marketing executives, where social media ranked next-to-last in a list of a dozen priorities for 2011, including customer retention, branding and direct marketing. However, for 2012, social media will jump to sixth on the list.