It is great to see such growth in social media use over the past year by the Fortune 500–not always quick to move as are smaller companies. Larger brands are beginning to see results that, in turn, allow them to expand and incorporate social media into more corporate programs. American Express is a great example, leveraging Twitter as a way to enter for a chance to win VIP tickets to Conan O’Brian’s sold out tour.

Hey @americanexpress I want to be with Coco in (insert city from list below). Pick me! http://bit.ly/bEUqsh #amexConan

So how have things changed in 2009 over 2008?

A longitudinal study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research shows steady uptake of social media marketing activities by Fortune 500 companies, with Twitter a clear winner.

Fortune 500 firms increased adoption of public blogs from 16% in 2008 to 22% in 2009, according to the research. A plurality of these blogs belong to the 100 largest companies in the group, though smaller companies ranked 401 through 500 gained share from 10% to 18% of the total over the time period.

Even more Fortune 500 companies have a Twitter account—35% (Twitter usage was not studied in 2008). Four out of the top five corporations on the list post regularly to their Twitter accounts. As with blogs, the top 100 companies have the greatest share of social media presence.

Many of the Fortune 500 are integrating their social efforts; 86% of those with blogs have a link to their Twitter account, for example. Three in 10 Fortune 500 blogs include video blogging, and 19% feature podcasts.

“The continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world,” said Norah Ganim Barnes, senior fellow and research chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at UMass Dartmouth, in a statement.

“These large and leading companies drive the American economy,” she said, “and to a large extent, the world economy.”

Previous data from the Center for Marketing Research showed that Fortune 500 companies were being outpaced by smaller, more nimble firms in the Inc. 500—a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US. More than one-half of the group used Twitter in 2009.

It’s only a matter of time before social media is thoroughly infused with all Fortune 500 companies, allowing new combination’s for direct interaction with customers over blogs, Twitter, and the next great social space.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Sometimes instead of talking it pays to step back and listen to what’s going on in your business and industry, especially when you work in the consumer listening space. That’s what I did for awhile and I learned a lot over the past several months by paying close attention to what our clients and other companies are looking to accomplish in social media in the near future.

One of the things that continues to surprise me is how much has changed in the last 12 months in this business and how much more I think it will change over the next 12 or so months. I’m not going to try to predict the future like so many people a lot smarter than me have done since the start of the year. That said, I don’t need to be The Amazing Kreskin to spot some emerging trends that are moving up the ladder in importance as the new year unfolds. Here are a few gaining some real traction in my opinion;

Organizational Design: Without a doubt, one of the most overlooked components of the entire social media business today is the development of a strategic organizational roadmap for brands to implement. One of the biggest corporate takeaways in 2009 was the natural migration of social media listening from one group to multiple groups. While not yet at a full-scale enterprise level, this evolution of more widespread listening will continue this year, and it is already spreading at a pace that strains the capabilities of many listening providers.

Any discussion about social media listening, measurement, and the now white-hot ‘customer engagement’ area without a full blown (global) organizational strategy is pretty much fruitless. This will continue to be a major issue in 2010 because, by and large, many companies haven’t yet recognized they have the need for it.

If I was running an agency or consultancy practice today, this is where I’d be aligning my thinking and resources for the immediate future. There’s been some work in this area by other firms besides ours, but nothing that I’ve seen that would make a Fortune 500 brand stand up and take notice.

Integrated Insights: Social media listening as a standalone data set has a life expectancy of less than 24 months, in my opinion. It may live longer in non-strategic or measurement adverse areas of a company, but it has no long-term lifespan with the real corporate decision-makers, internal brand strategists and research insights leaders.

I’m convinced more than ever that social media will grow in importance within the corporate environment, but just not the way it looks and feels today without a strategic facelift. This type of change will take place in the yet-to-be tapped world of social media data integration with other forms of traditional research and exploratory data mining. The recent Millward Brown, Dynamic Logic and Cymfony partnership is a step in this direction.

When this becomes more commonplace, listening and measurement will really begin to provide brands with a more robust level of actionable business insights and ROI measurement. Companies will demand that and those who don’t provide it will not be around for the long haul. Most people would be shocked how much more you can get from social media when you view it through the prism of other data sources. I expect companies to step up work in this area in 2010.

Brand Activation Analysis: Over the past couple of years it seems like everyone has been enamored with online customer outreach and pushing brands to get out there and address customer problems and issues on the Web. Call it the “Twitter Effect” if you like, but the focus has been more on the need to do something, especially if your competitor is already actively participating in social networks.

For brands already in the second and third generations of their social media strategy, the honeymoon period for brand activation is starting to wear off and fast. The novelty of “participating” is giving way to an increasing demand to understand the impact of this new generation of B-to-C (brand to consumer) communications. Like listening, brand activation is also starting to spread across companies with a real plan. The concept of the single Community Manager is starting to give way to integrated teams activated across different disciplines, such as customer service, marketing, crisis communications, sales, and other departments. It’s not widespread yet but the handwriting is already on the wall.

This new level of corporate engagement is also putting pressure on the development of new models of brand activation metrics and analysis. That may not sound so hard when you have one corporate responder on Twitter, but meaningful outcome analysis gets a lot more difficult when there is a global cross-functional team online. Measuring the impact on the brand gets a lot trickier. Dial-up your local social media listening provider and ask which button in their application will spit out that type of report. Good luck. Again, I have seen some work in this area, luckily some by our own company, but we all have a long way to go in this area.

The calendar has turned the page to another interesting and challenging decade, and as usual, I welcome your feedback, ideas and experiences in these areas.

Mike Spataro
Visible Technologies

Most brands and marketers invest lots of time and energy into customer segmentation programs in order to develop unique offers or programs based on demographics or buying behavior of their customers. I would propose that understanding where your customers and prospects are “hanging out” is an equally important data point if a brand or marketer wants to maximize exposure to existing or target segments. One such group that appears to be ripe with opportunity is boomers and seniors.  Recent data highlights the massive uptick in online time and social networking participation among them.

According to the NielsenWire Online, while people 65 and older still make up less than 10% of the active Internet universe, in the last five years their number has increased by more than 55 percent, from 11.3 million active users in November 2004 to 17.5 million in November 2009. Among people 65+, the increase of women online in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percentage points.

Not only are more people 65 and older heading online, but they are also spending more time on the Web. Time spent on the Internet by seniors increased 11% in the last five years, from approximately 52 hours per month in November 2004 to just over 58 hours in 2009.

88.6% of seniors, check personal e-mail as the No. 1 online activity performed in the last 30 days. Viewing or printing online maps and checking the weather online were the second and third most popular online activities.

The No. 1 online destination for people over 65 in November 2009 was Google Search, with 10.3 million unique visitors. Windows Media Player and Facebook were No. 2 and No. 3. Interestingly, Facebook, which came in at No. 3, ranked No. 45 just a year ago among sites visited by senior citizens.

Overall, the number of unique visitors who are 65 or older on social networking and blog sites has increased 53% in the last two years alone. 8.2% of all social network and blog visitors are over 65, just 0.1 percentage points less than the number of teenagers who frequent these sites.

Marketers would be wise to do more than test online marketing programs with seniors as we head in ‘10.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Some interesting new data about people who use Twitter from a recent survey that is worth reviewing.

The survey recently conducted by Crowd Science, revealed that Twitter is being accessed from mobile devices to a greater extent than other forms of social media. Twitter users also use social media more in such locations as cars, restaurants and restrooms. 11% of Twitter users admitted to accessing social media while driving during the preceding 30 days, compared with just 5% of other social media users. And 29% of Twitter users said they had accessed social media from cars at some point in the past, compared with 13% of non-users.

The survey found that only 27% of Twitter users tweet daily, while 46% check updates daily. In addition, 24% of Twitters users have never tweeted, or have ceased doing so. According to the survey, 40% of Twitter users access the service via mobile at least sometimes, compared with 32% for Facebook users, and 8% use mobile all the time vs. 3% for Facebook.

In addition to the greater usage while driving, the survey also found that over the past 30 days,

• Twice as many Twitter users as non-Twitter social media users (8% to 4%) had accessed any social media from a theater during a movie or live performance.
• 17% of Twitter users vs. 12% of non-Twitter social media users had accessed social media from a washroom or toilet.
• Nearly three times as many Twitter users as other social media users have accessed social media from restaurants (31% vs. 12%).

Considering the attitudes of Twitter users, says the report, a significant number of social media users use the applications because friends and contacts do (17%), or because stopping or reducing its use would be damaging to their social status (15%.).

32% of Twitter users feel they spend too much time using social media, 22% say they’ve written things on social media that they’ve later regretted, and 16% report that they often neglect important activities to spend time on social media. Yet 25% of Twitter users say social media is their favorite leisure activity, compared with 14% of non-Twitter social media users.

Additional survey results include:

• 41% of Twitter users prefer to contact friends via social media rather than telephone, compared with 25% of non-Twitter social media users,
• 11%, vs. only 6% of those not using Twitter, actually prefer social media over face-to-face contacts
• 14% of Twitter users said they have revealed things about themselves in social media that they wouldn’t under any other circumstances
• 8% admitted to “frequently stretching” the truth about themselves online

Twitter users tend to be older than non-Twitter social media users (54% over 30 years old, vs. 42%),

• They are twice as likely to be self-employed or entrepreneurs (18% vs. 9%)
• 24% vs. 15% “buy gadgets/devices when they first come out,”
• 48% vs. 30% have created a website
• 37% currently maintain a blog, twice as many as non-Twitter social media users

The Crowd Science study was conducted across more than 600,000 visitors to multiple websites between August 5-13, 2009, targeting social media users age 12 and up.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

I think the debate about the ROI of social media has really gone off the deep end. It always seems to be a hot topic at pretty much every marketing conference held nowadays.

On one hand you have people who insist you can’t really measure the business value of consumer conversations on the Web, while others who say social media insights will never be taken serious until they can be aligned with a company’s bottom line.

I believe many of the people who throw the white towel in on the ability to understand the value and measure social media are not looking at the problem or the solution the right way. One of the fun challenges of working in the social media analytics field is helping companies figure out how to learn and apply knowledge from what consumers say online about their brand, products and competitors to strengthen customer relationships and ultimately grow their businesses.

This can be a particularly sticky issue for many companies, and in particular global brands with growing needs to integrate social media data across multiple divisions of their organization, such as brand management, customer service, market research, marketing, corporate communications, and product public relations, to name a few. Notice I said ‘data’ not ‘insights.’ If you cannot convert insights into data, there is no real value to a brand. Smart marketers don’t monitor the Web, they learn from it. There’s a big difference.

The on-demand availability of this new stream of consumer intelligence being pumped into the offices of corporate America today is one of the biggest reasons social media measurement has become a white hot industry over the past few years. Static consumer data owned by market researchers for years now has a dynamic quality and is leapfrogging its way across many parts of an organization.

This trend is presenting some unique challenges for companies as they grapple with ways to convert learnings into actionable data within their corporate environment. It’s a fascinating exercise to see how different companies in different industries are approaching this new challenge. Depending on your job description, a consumer sharing information about your brand can either be viewed as extremely valuable or mostly insignificant.

In other words, even though one disgruntled customer could trigger an immediate response from someone in the corporate PR department, that same consumer would barely attract any attention in the product marketing or market research groups unless the information can be substantiated as part of much larger issue or trend that will impact whether or not the company will alter its marketing strategy or product development. And that’s not to say that companies should not listen to what one person says. We’ve all witnessed how a single voice can inflict damage on a brand, but rather it underscores the point that not all social media is equal in the eyes of a company.

While most of us would argue that 50 consumers complaining about a brand is substantial, you have to first figure out if that is 50 people out of 100 like-minded individuals or 50 people out of 1 million to gauge the real impact on this information. This is at the heart of how many brands are approaching the argument about an ROI model for social media.

There are two schools of thought about whether social media data should be analyzed on its own merits or integrated into existing Web analytical models used by most brands and interactive marketing agencies. It’s a debate that continues to pick up momentum and plays into the social media ROI debate. I’m a big believer in social media data integration with other forms of research. It’s where smart brands and agencies are now placing their bets.

As always, I welcome your feedback and comments.

Mike Spataro