Reporting on other surveys of social media trends I said that "The only thing certain about surveys of the business use of social media is that the trend is UP."
This was confirmed again by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth which has followed up on its 2007 and 2008 studies of social media usage by the Inc. 500 with the release of its 2009 survey.
Adoption and awareness continue to trend upward, with 91% of firms using at least one social media tool in 2009 and three-quarters describing themselves as “very familiar” with social networking.
Companies were also monitoring mentions of their brands in the social media space, at 68% this year. That figure was climbing steadily, up from 60% in 2008 and 50% in 2007, reports eMarketer.com.
I wonder if this is really correct in 2009?
According to the Center - in 2007, the Center’s first study of this group and their use of social media was released and revealed that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional and larger Fortune 500 companies in their use of social media. For example, at that time, some research showed that 8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500. This difference continued in 2008 with 16% of the Fortune 500 blogging vs. 39% of the Inc. 500. And it appears the Inc. 500’s lead in blogging will continue in 2009 with the Inc. 500 now blogging at a rate of 45%.
For example the Social Media Academy, in a recent survey, found that 70% of the Fortune 500 are engaged in social media. The difference between this 70% and the CMR's 80% may only be statistical or errors from the survey questions. For example in the CMR survey only 148 out of the Inc 500 responded.
Other findings
The CMR study had a few other interesting findings which were not generally reported on or picked up from the press release.
1. For the first time in this series of studies on the Inc. 500, executives were asked if their company uses social media tools to communicate with other companies like vendors, suppliers or partners. Again, social networking is the most widely used with 34% reporting they employed these tools. Twitter is being used by 26% of the Inc. 500 for this purpose. It is interesting to note that 1 in 4 Inc. 500 companies consider Twitter an appropriate vehicle for B2B communications.
2. Another question added to the 2009 study focused on the company’s use of search engine and/or social networking tools to recruit and evaluate potential employees. With the ease of access to information on people, it is no surprise that over half of the Inc. 500 are using search engines to assist in the recruitment and evaluation process. Google was the most popular search engine cited by executives. Forty-eight percent indicated using social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
3. When queried on the importance of social media, 26% of respondents in 2007 felt that social media is "very important" to their business and marketing strategy. That figure rose to 44% in approximately one year. It remains virtually the same in 2009. It is clear that this group of fast-growing companies considers the use of social media as a central part of their strategic plans.
