How The Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies Are Using Social Media

Dear author,
Your article and detailed analysis on social media networks are excellent.
What you said is quite true.
I am happily surfing many world well known social media networks and with many leading news channels.
All my writings were published.
I am taking tuitions to high school students on English,regional speaking medias,and well versed in social studies.
Twitter had increased his users bases in attractive ways.
Hereafter, many leading,upcoming higher learning schools will allow or interact with these social media works for greater knowledge,free expression of their ideas and it will surely boost students knowledges on many fields.
Those who understand very well on these social media networks,then, it will be a pleasant alternative from boredom,unwanted chat with non conforming standard sects, using their times,sharing of their likes and dislikes on many subjects by very lively manners.
Hope to get more lively writings,findings on growing networks from you.
Best wishes.,

An interesting study, but I’m not sure I understand their criteria. Tweeting at least once in the last 30 days isn’t the hallmark of an active Twitter account. And the occurance of @replies and retweets, while necessary for meaningful interaction, aren’t guarantees that meaningful interaction is happening.

I looked at some of the accounts mentioned. Conoco Phillips’ Twitter account is so clearly a prefunctory initiative, that I had to go to their website to make sure it was actually their account. Frankly, with that little thought or strategy invested, they’d be better off without it.

Chevron doesn’t come off much better, and neither does AT&T, GM, or a host of others. The study’s main criteria for identifying meaningful Twitter accounts – tweeting at least once a month and having a lot of followers – indicates a lack of understanding of how social media works. Social media may be unlike any other kind of marketing model, but there are still important criteria for developing successful implementations, like developing a clear strategy, creating corporate social media guidelines, linking all social media channels, dedicating and training staff, monitoring brand mentions, etc. When executed well, social media enables a brand, through the persona of its designated Tweeting employees, to engage, make friends, and form relationships. It’s a virtual meeting place where you can seek out your brand’s constituency and say, “How’re we doing? How can we help you?” Social media enables conversation. Conversation enables relationships. Relationships enable brand loyalty. Meaningful social media happens when companies stop talking AT their customers and start talking WITH them.

Great point about adoption curves for different social media technologies. Also, not all firm’s would adopt and use at the same time. Adoption curves are directly tied to learning curves and the ease of use and understanding are also not all the same. For example, many Twitters triers have not made the leap to practical use of this very useful communications tool. In the case of Twitter, awareness of third party tools like TweetDeck tends to lead to increased use and ultimately adoption among triers.

Hey Jeff,
An excellent and very informative piece. The stats are rather impressive – once again proving the power and effect that social media has (if used properly) and the fact that it’s not just a fad! Thanks for sharing.

Great stats, I can’t wait for these numbers to apply in canadian businesses. Should be in about 2 years time.

This is a great post. Thank you for sharing, Jeff!

Although completely subjective, I wonder how many of those companies would actually be considered doing a marginally-decent job at blogging, tweeting, FB’ing, etc. ?
I often encounter blogs/FB that are updated randomly and infrequently, or their tweets are lame at best.

*I’m going to refrain from citing examples but you know what I mean…

In the <iddle East, most companies are aware of the importance of including social media in their overall media relations and marketing plan, but lack the know-how to successfully create buzz online.

Cheers Jeff,

These stats are great. Hopefully we can use them to convince New Zealand businesses that socail media is crucial. We are a bit behind in this area!

Surprised to see “on line video” in the “levelled off or declined” category. Great information, thank you.