Social media is moving more rapidly into businesses than many people imagine. As is almost always the case with disruptive technologies, small companies are adopting social media faster than large companies and now there is a study that reveals the speed of change.
A study released yesterday shows that the fastest growing private companies are adopting social media at a pace nearly four times faster than the largest public companies.
The study, released yesterday by two faculty me members at the UMass Dartmouth's Center for Marketing Research, Dr. Nora Barnes and Eric Mattson compared Inc. 500 companies to Fortune 500 companies and for the first time, could provide valuable year-over-year data.
In 2007, the study revealed fast-growth private sector companies were outpacing the more traditional Fortune 500 in their use of social media by better than a 2-1 pace --8% of the Fortune 500 vs. 19% for Inc. 500s.
This year, an identical poll found 11.6% of the Fortune 500 currently had a public blog, depicting healthy growth. But, now 39% of the Inc. 500 companies are blogging, more than doubling from a year ago, and making the margin nearly 400% over Fortune 500 companies.
One note: the press release I received toggled a bit between the term "social media" and "blogging," so I'm not certain if all aspects of social media were examined. There is a good deal of behind firewall social media being used, and I am uncertain if these were explored by the survey team.
But I do believe that Barnes and Mattson are right on spot when they declare in their press release: "This research proves conclusively that social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed. It also indicates that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media within the Inc. 500 has nearly doubled in the past 12 months.
I met Dr. Barnes at SNCR Symposium in Boston where she gave a surprising and valuable presentation on how nonprofits were making more effective use of social media than were for-profit companies. She asserted that by getting closer with their communities, fund raisers were increasing revenues, while decreasing fund raising costs through social media. I learned a good deal more about this during my Social Media Global Survey interview with her.
I keep hearing from corporate social media enthusiasts how slowly social media is growing, but in fact it is growing rapidly and it should be little surprise that private sector companies often intent on disrupting larger incumbents are using social media more aggressively.
Fr those who cannot feel the momentum, I often advise people to picture themselves sitting on a porch in a tropical paradise on the Equator. They can feel no more motion than is caused by the gentlest of breezes. Yet, they are hurtling on an axis at the speed of 16,000 miles an hour.
