From Email to Mashups: How US Businesses Use Social Media

From Email to Mashups:From Email to Mashups:How US Businesses Use Social MediaHow US Businesses Use Social Media

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The Big Question

How are US businesses actually

using social media?

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Previous Research

• 2005 Cass/BackBone Media surveyed 75 corporate bloggers

• 2006 SocialText and Blog Business Summit hosted wikis to track Fortune 500 blog usage

• 2006 Makovsky/Harris Interactive found that of the Fortune 1,000, 15% have someone writing a blog

• 2006 Jupiter Research reported 35% of large companies planned to have corporate blog by end of the year

• 2005-2007 UMass Dartmouth/Mattson released the Inc. 500 study, Higher Ed study, Largest Charities and use of social media


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CorpTech®

• CorpTech® Directory of Technology Companies produced by OneSource Information Services, Inc. (Thompson Financial), contains company key contact data for over 98,000 public and private US technology companies.

• The database covers 17 industries. It includes accurate in-depth profiles on public and private companies and multiple executive contact names.

• In addition, the database includes approximately 2,800 public and private US not primarily high tech companies which were sampled for comparative purposes (on going).


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Methodology

• CorpTech® database used to generate random phone calls of marketing executives

• 245 companies responded to date

• Diverse in industry, size, revenue and location

• Statistically valid at + 6%

All calls were made at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.


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Definition

For purposes of this study social media technologies were defined to include the following:

Email Website Blogs Mash-ups Shared workspaces Podcasts Online video Social Networking

Social Bookmarking Wikis RSS Instant Messaging Web-Based

Conferencing Enterprise Directory Newsgroups/Forums


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The Survey

Developed a survey focused on 4 questions:

1. Are US businesses using social media?

2. Do US businesses consider social media effective?

3. Which departments are having the most success with social

media?

4. How does the decision making process happen regarding the

purchase of social media applications?


Number of Employees

44%

28%

16%

5%7%

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%

250-499 500-999 1,000-2,499 2,500-4,999 5,000 or more

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Annual Sales ($m)

11%

34%

31%

10%

14%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

$25m-$49.9m $50m-$99.9m $100m-$249.9m $250m-$499.9m $500m or more


Which Technologies are Currently Being Used

100%

51% 50% 49%

25%20% 18%

14%11% 10% 9%

5%

100%

74%

36%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

* As reported by marketing executive *


Usage by Departments

86%

70%

54%

32% 31% 30% 28% 27%

21% 17%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Mkt/Adv Sales IT HR All Depts. Admin. PR R&D Acct. Production



Which department is having the most success with these tools?

35%

18%

10% 8%

5% 3% 2% 2%

8%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Mkt/Adv Sales Combination IT All Depts. R&D HR PR Other



Which of the following best describes your process for buying collaboration and social media tools in your company?

1%0%1%

12%

18%20%

29%

1%

17%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Dept.Recommends

to IT

IT Decides

Dept. or Lineof Business

Decides

ITRecommends

to Dept.

Depts. and ITRecommend to

Each Other

MarketingDept.

Don't Know

Other No Response



Usage of Selected Social Media and Rated “Very Effective” in Meeting Business Objectives

100% 100%

74%

51% 50% 49%

25%

9%

5%

36%

55%

39%

24%

43% 42%

36%

20% 18%

11%14%

10%

58%

48%51%

65%

73%

50% 49%

18%

37%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

currently using

rate very effective


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The Conclusion

• Social media is part of the US business environment.

• 100% of the businesses studied use email and have a website.

• 96% are currently using some other form of social media in their business.

• Web 2.0 tools are rated similar in effectiveness to more mature technologies.


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More to Come

1. The data will be examined by industry in an effort to determine if industries behave differently in their use of social media.

2. The technology based industries will be compared with the not primarily high tech industries.

3. A full report will be released in the first quarter of 2008.


Thank you for coming to share the preliminary results of the UMass/Gilbane collaboration!

Documents

From Email to Mashups: How US Businesses Use Social Media