Wendy Tarr's Blog

The Global Social Media Check-Up 2010

Interesting stats on how Fortune 100 brands are using social media.  The study considers Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs. 

Slide 5: Interestingly, Twitter is the most popular social media tool, perhaps because it allows companies to promote existing content rather than create new content.  In my experience it was easy to set up a Twitter account and post frequently.  Identifying subject matter experts to participate in a corporate blog was a harder proposition, and once identified, gaining their commitment to post frequently was even more difficult.

Slide 9: Only 40% of Asian companies are on Twitter and most use it to communicate with Western stakeholders – I wonder how many non-English language Twitter accounts are live?

Slide 12: Analysis claims that stakeholders want to hear what companies are saying based on the number of followers and tweets about companies.  These stakeholders would also comprise business partners, competitors, employees… Depending on the organisation’s Twitter strategy pure numbers aren’t necessarily a sign of success.  Better metrics would be linked to engagement and potentially lead generation or conversion.  Again, the metrics need to be mapped to the strategy behind the company’s Twitter account.

Slide 19: US companies are the most prominent on Facebook with 69% having fan pages.  I’d be interested in understanding the split between B2B and B2C organisations.  I also feel that cultural differences play apart, as well as age groups and gender.  Some of my more cynical colleagues would NEVER join the fan page of a brand – and look at the stats, it appears my fellow Aussies in the Asia-Pac region are also more reluctant to become “fan’s” of brands.  However, with Facebook adoption so mainstream, it appears that people are looking at fan pages as a way of conversing with brands and voicing opinions (Slides 22-23).