From to Mashups: How US Businesses Use Social Media

The Big Question How are US businesses actually using social media? (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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 UMass Dartmouth/Mattson released the Inc. 500 study, Higher Ed study, Largest Charities and use of social media (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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). (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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. (c) Gilbane Group 2007

Definition For purposes of this study social media technologies were defined to include the following: Website Blogs Mash-ups Shared workspaces Podcasts Online video Social Networking Social Bookmarking Wikis RSS Instant Messaging Web-Based Conferencing Enterprise Directory Newsgroups/Forums (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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? (c) Gilbane Group 2007

Number of Employees (c) Gilbane Group

Annual Sales ($m) (c) Gilbane Group

Which Technologies are Currently Being Used * As reported by marketing executive * (c) Gilbane Group

Usage by Departments * As reported by marketing executive * (c) Gilbane Group

Which department is having the most success with these tools? * As reported by marketing executive * (c) Gilbane Group

Which of the following best describes your process for buying collaboration and social media tools in your company ? * As reported by marketing executive * (c) Gilbane Group

Usage of Selected Social Media and Rated “Very Effective” in Meeting Business Objectives (c) Gilbane Group

The Conclusion Social media is part of the US business environment. 100% of the businesses studied use 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. (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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 (c) Gilbane Group 2007

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