A research group from the University of Massachusetts (PDF) released their studies of the Fortune 500‘s adoption and usage of blogging and twittering. Conclusion: the importance of social media in the business world is consistently growing.
Over all the Fortune 500 companies, 108 are maintaining an active blog. Last year the number of blogs only came up to 81, which means that this social media marketing gained 6% in one year. Three out of the top five cooperations (Wal-Mart, Chevron and General Electric) run a corporate blog.
The research also went one step further and analyzed how the Inc 500 – the fastest growing private companies in the US were using blogs for their communication. What was astonishing was, that the Inc. 500 are very actively using social media and are way ahead of the Fortune 500 when it comes to social media. In 2009, 45% of the Inc. 500 had an own blog.
Back to the Fortune 500 and their social activities. An even greater increase than bloggin, the social microbloggin site Twitter could claim for itself. In 2009, 173 companies of the Fortune 500 had an active Twitter account and were socializing on a monthly basis. 69% these companies constantly responded to questions or comments of their followers. One striking fact is, that the top 200 companies account for 47% of Twitter accounts.
The research could show, that the usage of social media is increasing and becoming more important even for big companies. The question arises if social media marketing will become the status quo of marketing within a company?
Read the whole research here
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