Keeping Up with the Inc. 500: Social Networking Is Here to Stay…

WOMMA reported on a new University of Massachusetts study telling us the "Hype is Real: Social Media Invades the Inc. 500".  Ha! Take that you business blogging-, podcasting-, social networking-disbelivers.

The researchers surveyed 121 of the fastest-growing US companies in Nov.-Dec. 2006.  The results are surprising, even to die-hard customer-conversation strategy advocates like me.  Familiarity with these six primary types of social media–blogging, podcasting, social networks, message/bulletin boards, online video and wikis–was higher than you would think.  The gotchas for me are:

• 42% are ‘familiar/very familiar’with social networking
• 66% say social networking is key to their business/marketing strategy
• 33% are using message boards–the highest of all six social media surveyed
• More surveyed companies are using social networking (27%) than blogging (19%)

Here is link to the study’s executive summary.

So it sounds like its time to get on the social media bandwagon.  If your company is hosting a message board, good for you. Sounds like a direct path to an online social network!  Like Autodesk, here is my earlier post about the company’s social networks/online communities.  Autodesk’s recent online communities grew out of their message boards, first established in the 1980s.

If you’re not engaging your customers and prospects using these new tools, might be time to look at which ones fit best with your company and your customers.  Is anyone having success at building customer conversations using message boards?  Or other social networking?

Category: Social Networking