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Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage

by Bill Ives

March 5, 2010 at 3:54 am · Filed under FASTforward'09

The team of Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have been dong a number of studies on social media and business (see for example: Thinking Like A Blogger: Is Blogging An Attitude That Can Be Taught?). In 2009, they released one of the first studies of the Fortune 500’s adoption and usage of one of the best-known forms of social media – blogging (see Fortune 500 Blogging Study). This new study, Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage, revisits that prior study and expands to look at the Fortune 500’s usage of Twitter.

A Fortune 500 company was counted as having a blog if they had a public-facing corporate blog from the primary corporation with posts in the past 12 months. This is the same definition used in the prior 2008 study. The data was collected in October and November 2009. One hundred-eight (22%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past 12 months. This is an increase from 16% in the prior study. The top 100 companies on the list represent 39% of the 108 blogs in the 2009 F500. In 2008, 38% of the total number of blogs came from the top 100. Consistent with the findings on the 2008 Fortune 500, 90% percent of the Fortune 500 blogs take comments, have RSS feeds and take subscriptions

A company was considered a user of Twitter if they had an official corporate account. Of the 108 blogs located, 93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account, that’s more than three times as many as members of the 2008 list. One hundred and seventy-three (35%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500 has a Twitter account with a post within the past thirty days. Of the top 100 companies on the list, 47 have a Twitter account.

One hundred and twenty companies (69%) consistently responded with @replies or retweets within the past thirty days. These Twitter accounts are kept up-to-date with current news and information. There is consistent interaction with other users and on-going discussions that are easy to follow.

The researchers concluded that, “the continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world.” I certainly agree. It is interesting, but not surprising, that the growth with Twitter exceeds that with blogs. Many marketing departments that missed the blog movement have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.

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Kristina AllenMarch 5th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

It’s both fascinating and alarming that more Fortune 500 companies have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon than the blog wagon. I often think of the blog as the grand central station of social media. Twitter, Facebook and the like are great for connecting, customer service, promotion, conversation and so on, but blogs allow organizations to think in paragraphs rather than one or two sentences at a time.

Short and sweet status updates are fantastic, but to bare to the heart and soul of your business you need a larger platform that is still conversational in nature, I think.

Bill IvesMarch 5th, 2010 at 9:30 pm

Kristina – I agree. If you want to deliver a message with any complexity you need a blog and not just Twitter- otherwise you are simply pointing to other’s messages Bill

Jon HusbandMarch 8th, 2010 at 4:40 am

Second and third Kristina’s and Bill’s comments about blogging versus Twitter in the organization.

ffblogMarch 5th, 2010 at 3:55 am

New: : Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage http://bit.ly/bYx5Xt