Top 100 Fortune Companies puts together the most respected and renowned names, which also have access to the best resources due to the large budget they have in hands to manage. This has always gave them a boost when it came to traditional marketing, but is it the same when talking about their online marketing strategy  and their involvement in creating a strong online brand? Some say social media marketing  is about using the right strategy and getting it implemented in the right way, and the budget allocated is less important. A recent study carried out by Burson-Marsteller Communications Group gives evidence regarding the involvement of these top 100 companies in online reputation management  as well as shows evidence of the level of engagement they get from their audience. The study refers to the largest four social networking  channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Business Blogs.

According to the results, the percentage chart of Fortune global 100 companies using those four social media marketing channels is the following: Twitter (65%), Facebook (54%), YouTube (50%) and Blogs (33%).

Although there is a difference when it comes to the number of social networking channels they are using, out of the same four.  It seems that when referring to the companies using at least one of the four channels, European companies are leading, 88% of them using at least one, while the US has 86% and Asia only 50%. That is a surprise, since most people assume the US should lead when it comes to social media use.

However the US is leading when referring to the companies using all four social networking sites. As see below, 28% of the US companies are using all four, while only 15% of the European companies are using all four. Whereas 25% of the Asian companies are also using all four channels.

The study also investigates the top 100 companies' activity on Twitter for one week. The results show 82% of them are tweeting company news, 38% are actually responding to people's tweets and only 32% are re-tweeting. It looks like large companies are doing a better job at promoting themselves than actually listening and responding to their audience. Their customer service orientation does not seem to be very good when looking at these results. Some of them are missing two very important steps of social media: listen and respond.

Interesting point is that a large number of their followers are re-tweeting their news. The study shows 32% of the tweets coming from Fortune Global 100 companies are re-tweeted.

Their presence on Facebook seems to be better. After analysing the Facebook Fan Pages activity for one week, the study shows that 59% of the companies have posts of their company and 43% have posts from fans. Furthermore, 51% also have likes from fans and 41% have posts with comments from fans. The average number of fans per page is high as well, about 40,884 fans per account.

Since the interaction created on YouTube is covered on larger time span, the companies' activity for one month has been analysed. Results show that 68% of the companies uploaded new videos and 76% of channels also got feedback from viewers.

The blog activity of the top 100 Fortune companies was analysed throughout a month, revealing a rather low involvement of companies. Only 36% of corporate blogs had posts during that month! The feedback they got from viewers was better, 54% having blog comments.

Last but not least, the research gives an overview of the companies' average number of accounts per company. Results show that most companies have an average number of 4.2 Twitter accounts, 2.1 Facebook accounts, 1.8 YouTube channels and 4.2 blogs running.

In nutshell based on the results of this study we can conclude that fortune 100 companies are quite actively using Social Media channels to get attention from their audience. More than 85% of Fortune 100 American and European companies are using at least one social media channel and all over the globe more than 80% tweet company news regularly. Their Facebook presence has been very effective, with an average Fan base of more than 40K per account. They are not neglecting the power of videos either, nearly 70% of them upload company videos time to time and their followers do comment on the videos. However they are not utilising blogging that effectively. With the increase in people using social media networks for expressing more and more it is important for all the businesses to start listening and engaging their loyal customers online.

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SysComm International provides focused Internet marketing services including fully managed and highly successful Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking Company, Business Blog, Social Media Marketing.
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