Interesting survey on the use of Social Media for business
Ralf Haller
July 7th, 2009
This survey was done by a sales and CRM expert and not by a Social Business Software vendor or an analyst company also selling their services and reports to SBS vendors. So, in short, it should have higher credibility. It was done among the members of a social media information community who should be very familiar with the subject. I also think the respondents’ companies are most likely all US-based.
Some of the more interesting outcomes are:
- while most companies are using social media currently for branding and marketing communication purposes, the survey shows that in the future lead generation will be the number one purpose
- currently the most used tool is LinkedIn while in the future blogging will be the highest ranked
- there is a clear difference in how small and larger (>1000 employees) companies use social media: smaller companies focus on external use such as marketing and customer research, while bigger companies use it for internal purposes such as information sharing and collaboration
- for the use of Twitter (still rare in B2B btw) the same holds true. Currently it is used for sharing breaking news but the majority of the people interviewed mention that this will be “keeping in immediate touch with customers” for the future
Tags: social communications