By nickjohnson - July 24th, 2013

The Center for Marketing research over at UMass Dartmouth have just released the next in their series of influential Fortune 500 Social Media Adoption studies.

 

The general message is one of an increasing confidence in the utility of social media as a marketing channel from America’s largest corporations.

 

Some key findings include:

 

  • Corporate blogging is growing again after a levelling out in 2011. 23% hosted a public-facing blog two years ago, and that figure has jumped to 34% in the 2013 survey

  • 77.4% of the Fortune 500 now have at least one corporate Twitter account. Considering the Fortune500 is made up of aerospace and defence companies, as well as retailers, banks and food companies, this is impressively high.

  • Unsurprisingly however, the more consumer-focused the business, the higher the adoption of Twitter. 94% of the commercial banks in the list have a Twitter account, 93% of the Food Consumer Products companies, and 91% of the Speciality Retailers on the list.

  • Facebook adoption is slightly lower, at just under 70% - though again the highest adoption rates go to the consumer facing Speciality Retail (96%) and Telecommunications (88%) sectors

  • Newer social networks are still rarely adopted, highlighting the slow-moving nature of marketing departments at the biggest companies in the USA. Only 9% of companies use Pinterest, 9% use Instagram, and 9% use Foursquare. In this context, Google+’s 35% adoption rate is very impressive

 

For more on the results, including conclusions and analysis from the Center for Marketing Research, head here.

 

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