I attended the the SNCR symposium at Hotel Marlowe – Boston on Nov 14th. The room was a powerhouse of PR and news media professionals. The theme of the sympoisum was to give the attendees several research results. The presentations will be posted online at http://sncr.org/.
Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. along with Eric Mattson from The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the use of social media in corporations.
Nora is a dynamic and passionate speaker. She discussed how the study found change in social media use between 2007 and 2008 in INC 500 companies.
Top take aways for me:
- INC 500 companies have adopted Social Media aggressively
- In 2008 77% are using at least one form of social media ( Wiki seems to have gone down in usage)
- 60% are monitoring Social Media. Among reasons for using Social Media :
- Another way to communicate
- Connect with customers
Given that previous research shows that just 11.6% of the Fortune 500 have a public blog, it is astounding to see that 39% of the INC 500 are blogging. The 3.6% increase in Fortune 500 companies participating in the blogosphere pales in comparison to the 20% increase in INC 500 companies after the same time period.
How do these INC 500 companies measure success?
- Number of hits/Page Views
- Awareness
- Customer Satisfaction
- Feedback/comments
- Lead Generation
- Revenue, Sales
- Word of Mouth
Why some of them do not use Social Media:
- Do not have a desired need
- Media does not match audience
- Do not have the resources/ Time constraints
The New York Times covered this study in a June article
The Executive summary and abstract of the study is below
Also, Network Solutions is a Finalist for New Communications Award of SNCR and I am waiting eagerly for the ceremony today.
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