This is quite an interesting study due to the fact it looks at the 500 fastest growing companies in the USA and how they are using Social Media.

 The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. 

 The new study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. For details about the 2009 Inc. 500 and the complete directory of the included companies, please visit Inc. Magazine’s website at www.Inc.com.

In 2007, the Center’s first study of this group and their use of social media was released and revealed that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional and larger Fortune 500 companies in their use of social media. For example, at that time, some research showed

•  8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to
• 19% of the Inc. 500.

This difference continued in 2008 with

• 16% of the Fortune 500 blogging vs.
• 39% of the Inc. 500.

And it appears the Inc. 500’s lead in blogging will continue in 2009 with the Inc. 500 now blogging at a rate of

• 45%. (The update on the Fortune 500 is expected soon.).

Note: There has been a 237% increase in blogging by the USA’s 500 fastest growing companies,it is also interesting to note that significant 41% of those who don’t have a blog are intending to implement one.

This research proves once again 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 continued to grow in the past 12 months. 

Questions probed the familiarity of respondents with six prominent social media (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards and wikis). In order to maintain the integrity of all comparisons, all those tools studied in the first two studies were included in this followup research.

In 2009, several new tools were added including the popular microblogging service Twitter and other popular social networking sites like Linkedin, Facebook, and MySpace.  

7  Highlights

1. Social networking continues to lead the way. The technology that continues to be the most familiar to the Inc. 500 is social networking with 75% of respondents in 2009 claiming to be “very familiar with it” (compared to 57% in 2008). Another noteworthy statistic around familiarity is Twitter’s amazing “share of mind” with sixty-two percent of executives reported being familiar with the new microblogging and social networking platform.
2. The adoption curves for different social media technologies are not all the same. Interestingly, while social networking and blogging have enjoyed growth in actual adoption, the use of message boards, online video, wikis and podcasting has leveled off or declined. The addition of Twitter (considered by respondents to be both a microblogging site and a social networking site) in the latest study shows that an amazing 52% of the Inc. 500 companies are already using this tool for their business.
3. Regardless of the particular technology, social media matters and is here to stay. Forty-three percent of the 2009 Inc. 500 reported social media was “very important” to their business/marketing strategy. And an incredible 91% of the Inc. 500 is using at least one social media tool in 2009 (up from 77% in 2008). In addition, as they ramp up their usage, the Inc. 500 companies are also seeking to protect themselves legally, with 36% having implemented a formal policy concerning blogging by their employees.
4. Social Media that has levelled off or declined are
   • Message Boards 28%
   • Online Video 36%
   • Wikis 25%
   • Podcasting 12%
5. Social Media that has increased
   • Social Networking 80%
   • Blogging 45%
   • Twitter 52%
6. Online Video though slightly declining in use in corporations, their intent to to adopt appears strong with 36% planning to  to use online video, just behind Blogging
7. For monitoring conversations online on social media about their brand, 68% of companies were doing this in 2009

So are you planning to use social media or blog?

Maybe it's an artifact of the native-adopter digital divide. Maybe it's merely a blind spot to our own complex behavior. Whatever the reason, what most of us think about how teens use the internet is wrong.

Myth #1: Teenagers are much heavier users of the internet than "we" are.

Fact: Even when you take out our work lives, adults 25 - 44 are the heaviest users of the internet. It's not our kids who are online all the time, it's us. Just at home, we're browsing ~34 hours a month, compared to 10 for the teen set. Even when it comes to relatively new behaviors, like watching video online, adults consume significantly more.

Check out these numbers from recent Nielsen research:

 

 

Myth #2: Teenagers are much savvier users of the internet than "we" are - connected around the globe, loose in social networks, generally leading the charge into a brave new world.

Fact: Just because technology has changed doesn't mean being a teenager has.

This is a sketch I shared at work recently about the profoundly different ways that "grownups" (us) and teens use social networks and media. Teens are much more likely to have a closer-in world view, to be cautious when putting themselves out there, to be worried about how they'll be perceived. While we're out boldly networking with everyone from our high school sweethearts to someone we met at a conference the other day, they're typing with the same people they sit across the lunch table with.

 

Ein toller Artikel von Susanne Holzer.aka @sueholzer, die ihre eigene Umfrage auswertet.

Reader engagement with blogs has changed dramatically over the last three years, primarily because of the rise of online social networks, according to new numbers released by analytics firm Postrank today. Postrank published an analysis based on metrics for signals like comments, trackbacks, shared links and online bookmarks for the top 1000 most-engaging feeds online and for 100,000 randomly selected blog posts in each year since 2007.

The numbers paint a stark picture: blogging has changed, but the blogging scene is in some ways in better shape than it was three years ago.

The big picture is that total engagement with online content is growing while on-site engagement is declining in significance as off-site engagement like link sharing on social networks grows. Surprisingly, this off-site link sharing has also extended the lifespan of content.

Highlights from the report include the following:

• Total reader engagement has grown 30% year over year or 69% total for the top 1,000 feeds, which includes blogs and mainstream news sites.

For 100,000 randomly selected blog posts in each of 2007, 2008 and 2009...

Engagement on-site has grown in absolute terms but the share of total engagment that happens on-site vs. off-site has dropped 50%.

Trackbacks have fallen from 19% of engagement to 3% of engagement.

Engagement on social networks like but not limited to Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook has grown from 1% to over 29% of total engagement. The Postrank staff admitted that this was a surprisingly low number but said that in aggregate there is still a whole lot of activity going on outside social networks.

Segmenting from the last amount of effort required up to the most, reader engagement now looks like this: 29% is link-sharing on social networks, 29% is bookmarking or voting on sites like Delicious, Digg and Reddit, 38.5% is comments on or off-site and trackbacks are now 3% of engagement. "Trackbacks are taking a nose dive," Postrank CTO Ilya Grigorik told us by phone, "bookmarking sites have consistently gone down over the last 3 years, but voting on sites like Digg or Reddit has grown."

Perhaps most significantly, blog posts now have a longer life span. In 2007 tracked posts saw 94% of engagement within the first day and 98% of that first day's engagement happened within the first hour. In 2008 that number fell to 83% within the first day and in 2009 it was a mere 64%. Thus Postrank concludes that 36% of reader engagement in the top blogs happens after 1 day. "While the real-time web is all about lowering the latency," Grigorik says, "the pervasive nature and number of people engaged in their communities and conversations (the Social Web) is helping with information discovery. People are worried that the real-time web will destroy their readership as everyone just gets distracted by the newest shiny thing on Twitter, but the numbers show something very different. It's so easy to spread information now that it lasts longer and finds more niches - this trend is helping content travel further."

Its too bad Technorati stopped publishing information about Blogs and related statistics in their "State of the Blogosphere reports", but the information and stats from Post Rank are also quite good!