Are America’s fastest-growing companies shifting away from blogging as a primary social media platform?  ”Maybe” could be a conclusion based on new research examining the INC 500 from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts.

For the first time in the five years that this research has been conducted, the use of blogging declined. Blogging had been steadily climbing as a corporate communications tool — 19% of the INC 500 blogged in 2007, 39% in 2008, 45% in 2009, 50% in 2010 and just 37% last year.

But there is an element of mystery here.  Despite the decline, blogging was considered the most “successful” social media platform for the fourth consecutive year!  In addition, among those companies not blogging, 62 percent are considering adding a blog.

How can we reconcile this seemingly inconsistent data?  Is corporate blogging really declining? I have a theory that would conclude “no,” but before I explain my rational, let’s look at a few more interesting trends from this study:

Facebook and LinkedIn lead the way. For the first time, the platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn.  As you can see in the graph above, video and podcasting use declined in this period. The researchers theorized that companies are spending more time on Facebook at the expense of blogs and video.

Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. 90% of responding INC 500 executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. 88% see these tools as important for generating web traffic and 81% find them important for lead generation. 73% say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.

Social media investments will rise.  25% of the respondents said they plan to keep their social media budget the same in 2012, and 71% plan to increase their investment by 20% or more. Just one company had a plan to decrease the social media marketing budget.

Monitoring the social media buzz levels off. The 2011 study shows 68% of companies are using social media monitoring tools, down from 70% in 2010, which was the highest percentage of the past 5 years. Only 24% of the companies have a formal social media policy.

Measurement is inconsistent.  When asked how they measured the effectiveness of their social media efforts, executives reported using fans, followers and supporters (26%), web traffic (25%), lead generation (16%), reduced cost of customer support (10%), the value of sales generated through social media programs (7%).

The work is being handled inside. Executives were asked how social media resource needs were filled in their companies. Two-thirds of the companies reported retraining or repositioning existing employees to handle their social media efforts, 10% use external consultants or agencies, 7% have made new hires specifically for their social media efforts.

Are company blogs really declining?

If you just read the headline of this study and looked at the graph at the top of this blog post, you would be hearing a death knell for blogging. But let’s not bury blogging so fast. Let’s apply a little critical reasoning to this study …

• It is important to consider that the data presented by the university researchers is not an apples-to-apples comparison. There is a tremendous “churn” of companies on the INC list. In fact, from 2007 when the survey started to 2011, the list of companies has almost completely changed.
• The authors admit that these changes have impacted the overall statistics in “distinct ways.” Most notably, there has been an increase in companies providing Government Services (a result of “Obama administration initiatives”). The researchers state that Government Services companies are among the least likely companies to blog.  So in 2011, many traditional “blogging companies” were replaced on the list by companies that are unlikely to have blogs.  If the researchers surveyed the exact same sample group, blogging levels may have even gone up in 2011.
• Also notable is that more than 60 percent of the companies on the INC 500 list did not exist in 2005. It is possible that these start-ups are not moving away from blogging to Facebook as the authors surmised.  I think a more likely scenario is that these young companies are STARTING with Facebook because the entry barriers are so low compared to blogging. This would reconcile the curious fact that the companies with blogs see them as successful (why would they quit?) and that most companies who are not blogging plan to do so.
• Finally, another possible cause of the strange drop is sampling error. Only 34% of the INC 500 companies responded to the survey.  Within the stated sampling errors, it is possible to conclude that the 2010 data and 2011 data are nearly identical.

By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist

Traditionally, marketers have researched their customers’ demographics to have a clear idea of their age, gender, income, location, and other traits.

Marketers added psychographics to the mix, allowing them to take into account customer’s interests, values, and attitudes. A step up from the very general information that demographics provide, psychographics enable marketers to speak to customers in a way that resonates with them. Now, in the age of social media and behavioral ad targeting, we have to add another type of data to our arsenal: socialgraphics.

Socialgraphics capture the attitudes, characteristics, behavior, and, most important, motivations of customers online. Understanding an audience’s socialgraphics allows marketers to design internet marketing strategies that attract and retain customers in different online venues.

Socialgraphics helps move your message

The new world of digital marketing requires the kind of research that user experience teams routinely do, but marketers have not always accessed.  Yet, it’s critical information for companies looking to deeply engage consumers and really motivate them to take the online actions crucial to the brand.

Demographics and pyschographics may have been enough when marketers were focused simply on online advertising — finding the right keywords to target an audience was enough.

But in the complex digital world of social media, content marketing, email, reviews, etc., marketers need to find ways to get online users to take specific actions, what I call social actions, such as sharing the organization’s content, recommending it to others, opening emails, writing reviews, etc. To motivate users to take action, you first have to understand what motivates them. That requires a much deeper level of knowledge about user’s psyches.

Levels of socialgraphics

To be most effective, marketers need to understand the socialgraphics of their audience at a minimum of two levels:

Audience segmentation.  If your demographic segment is “college-educated working mothers of elementary-aged children,” you need to understand the general socialgraphics of this segment, too.

Platform segmentation.  An audience segment may behave differently or have varying motivations in different online communities. For example, working mothers may look for emotional support and practical suggestions for balancing work and life in one forum, but be focused on career growth and networking with other professional mothers in another forum. It’s important to understand the user’s motivations within different communities in order to share the right content and engagement opportunities in each community.

The hunt for socialgraphic data

It is possible to find available data to leverage, but chances are, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and dig deep and make your own observations through focus groups or simply immersing yourself in different groups and platforms to understand what is going on there.  Some of the socialgraphic data to focus on are:

• Internet use data—Where do these users congregate online? What sites do they use? What online media do they consume? What times do they use different websites and media? How internet savvy are they?
• Mobile use data—Similarly, what are this segment’s mobile usage traits? Smartphone or not? What activities do they do on their phones? What times are they active?
• Goals and motivations—For different venues, what is the audience segment’s interest or goal in participating? What need does the community fill for this user? What does the user hope to gain?
• Behavior—How does this audience behave online, particularly in different venues? Do they create content or just consume it? Are they frequent sharers or posters? How do their patterns of creating, commenting, or sharing differ and what triggers the differences?
• Emotional and pyschological needs–What emotional needs does a given community fill? What emotional needs is the user filling by participating online? How does the user want to be perceived online or in different communities?

Socialgraphics as competitive advantage

At this point, it appears that few companies do the kind of research necessary to understand user’s socialgraphics. In fact, in a November 2011 McKinsey report surveying marketers, 38% of respondents said that their company had basic demographic data on each customer. But only 18% reported having psychographic data, such as interests or attitudes. It’s probably safe to conclude that even less had socialgraphic data.

In a noisy online world increasingly cluttered with content, understanding your customers this deeply may be the only way to create a point of differentiation for your brand in the long-term.

Does this make sense to you?  Are you starting to think about customer online behaviors in your strategies?

Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec

Can’t see the video?  Click here: Mark Schaefer interviews Helen Brown

This video will make you think!  On my recent trip to Boston I got to catch up with Helen Brown, who is not only my friend and customer, but also a brilliant thinker and strategist when it comes to search.

Why?

Her livelihood depends on it!  Her firm helps nonprofits thrive through expert research, training and consulting on donor strategies. Search engines are the life blood of her business.

So imagine my surprise when she described to me a phenomenon that is occurring for all of us. As Google tailors each of our searches based on our search history, it is inexorably limiting the possibilities and quality of our searches. In this short video interview, Helen describes a strategy to “take your search back” as well as a new Google tool called Verbatim that is designed to re-open search possibilities for all of us.

Did you learn something from this video? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

Let’s look at some of the numbers from the study.

The largest public companies have traditionally lagged behind other organizations in both level of blogging and the adoption of other social media platforms.  But the issue is even more dramatic than this chart depicts. The top 100 companies are the most active blogging companies.  Only 17% of the next 400 companies blog.

Blogging … and all other social media activities in the study … have stalled or declined over the previous year, according to the unversity study.

 Nearly every large charity and university in America is on Facebook. Less than 60 percent of the F500 are. The researchers conclude:

These results may signal a leveling off and possibly retrenchment when it comes to the adoption of social media among the 2011 F500. There is also evidence of change in the adoption of these tools by industry and a clear sign from some companies that these are not part of their communications strategy. Given that the F500 are the titans of American business, we may be seeing the slowdown in business adoption of social media. At the very least, this group appears to have slowed or stopped its adoption of the three most prominent tools – Blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

I find this to be very interesting data. Although the F500 companies may be re-trenching, the INC 500 of America’s fastest-growing companies continue to expand the use of social media.  What do you make of these trends?

How is the Internet and social media affecting our lives, our families, our careers?
Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project is leading the charge to help answer these questions and more.

Pew is definitely my go-to place for statistically-valid, well-crafted research on the Internet and social web. What a thrill it was to be on a panel with Lee last week and have a chance to interview him about new directions in Internet reseach. In this short video interview, Lee talks about …

• The Internet research that is making him go “WOW!”
• His thoughts on mobile apps replacing the world wide web.
• Three exciting new research projects including non-profit and churches, computational research using existing social media data, the future of the Internet.

Hope you enjoy the interview, and please share your thought ins the comment section!

Social media usage may have reached a tipping point, according to a new report from one of my favorite sources, The Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50% of all adults use social networking sites.

The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age cohort now use social networking sites on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago. However, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%).

“The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,” said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”

In a separate question, when social networking users were asked for one word to describe their experiences using social networking sites, “good” was the most common response (above). Overall, positive responses far outweighed the negative and neutral words that were associated with social networking sites (more than half of the respondents used positive terms). Users repeatedly described their experiences as “fun,” “great,” “interesting” and “convenient.” Less common were superlatives such as “astounding,” “necessity,” and “empowering.”

“Social networking sites continue to cement their place as a significant part of mainstream online life,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, a Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “Even as some users find their experiences with social networking sites frustrating or overwhelming, most seem to view the services positively on the whole.”

Read or download the full report: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Social-Networking-Sites.aspx

Social media usage soars

100 percent of colleges and universities studied are using some form of social media, up from 95 % last year, 85% in 2009 and 61% in 2008.

Facebook is the most common form of social networking being used with 98% of colleges and universities reporting having a Facebook page (up from 87% last year). Eighty-four percent have a school Twitter account (up from 59%) and 66% have a blog (up from 51%). Podcasting has risen from 22% to 41% in just one year.

College admissions professionals are flocking to LinkedIn with 47% on the professional networking site, up from 16% last year. The number of schools using MySpace has declined from 16% last year to 8% this year. Foursquare and You Tube were included in the study for the first time and are being used by 20% and 86% respectively. The use of message boards and video blogging have remained at approximately the same level as last year (37% and 47% respectively).

The rise of the blog

Blogging continues to be embraced by colleges and universities. While other sectors are reporting a leveling off of blogging (i.e., Fortune 500, Forbes Top Charities) higher ed adoption has grown significantly in the past year.

Eight percent of schools with blogs are using some internally developed applications (down from 14% in 2009-2010). Others cite WordPress (38%) and Blogger (10%) as platforms. The use of WordPress as a blogging platform has doubled in the past year.

When asked who manages their blog, the most popular answers were the admissions office (including the director, staff and students), marketing, and public relations.  The researchers also claim that these institutions are using their blogs “siginificantly” more effectively by developing communities around them. 85 percent now accept comments, up from 63% four years ago.  The report also points to a four-year increase of RSS availability from 46% to 77% as an indicator of an increased sophistication in the use of blogging as a “conversation: and recruitment strategy.

And it seems to be working …

When asked how successful social media tools have been for their schools, respondents have “consistently raved about their experience,” especially Facebook (95% success) and YouTube (92%). For every tool studied, a high degree of success is reported. The relatively new Foursquare is being used by 20 percent of those interviewed while 61% of them report success with it. The exception is MySpace which shows a decrease in perceived success from 42% to 34%.

Surprisingly, school “listening” activities have fallen off. 53 percent in 2007, 54% in 2008 and 73% in 2009 report they monitored the internet for buzz, posts, conversations and news about their institution. The latest research shows a slight decrease to 68%. Given the ease with which monitoring can be done, it is surprising that all schools are not monitoring online buzz about their institutions.

US colleges and universities are taking the lead in using social media as part of their marketing and recruiting plans. Some schools will use search engines and social media sites to garner more information about prospective students. They are evaluating the effectiveness of tools that were adopted early on and making decisions about which new tools to add into their communications strategy. The goal is clearly to reach and engage those tech savvy young people who may be making at least initial decisions about a school based on its online presence.

Looks like colleges and non-profits are leading the way by far over corporations in social media marketing usage. This has been trending for our years now. isn’t it interesting that the organizations with the most money and resources have the least use of these tools … maybe that makes sense?

Do social media technologies isolate people and promote false relationships? Or are there important benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine these questions in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

Among the many interesting findings, Pew reports that the social relationship “boost” received by Facebook users is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married.

I always enjoy reading these reports because Pew is one of the few reliably valid sources of research out there!  The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Here is a summary: 

The number using social networking sites has doubled since 2008 and has gotten older.

In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one site. This is close to double the 26% of adults (34% of Internet users) who used a social site in 2008. Among other things, this means the average age of social media users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.  Over half of all adult social site users are now over the age of 35. 

Facebook dominates the social space in this survey: 92% of social media users are on Facebook; 29% use MySpace, 18% used LinkedIn and 13% use Twitter.

By percentage, Twitter has experienced the most growth.  Nearly 60% of Twitter users, 39% of Facebook users, and 36% of LinkedIn users joined within the past year

There is considerable variance in the way people use various social networking sites.

52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7% of MySpace and 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.

On Facebook on an average day:

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.

 Twitter is for girls, LinkedIn is for boys?

Facebook users are more trusting than others.

Pew asked people if they felt “that most people can be trusted.” They found that the typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted. Further, they found that Facebook users are even more likely to be trusting. They found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

Facebook users have more close relationships.

The average American has just over two close Facebook confidants (2.16) – that is, people with whom they discuss important matters. This is a modest, but significantly larger number than the average of 1.93 core ties reported in 2008. They found that someone who uses Facebook several times per day averages 9% more close, core ties in their overall social network compared with other Internet users.  

Follow the money

Facebook users get more social support than other people.

Pew looked at how much total support, emotional support, companionship, and instrumental aid adults receive. On a scale of 100, the average American scored 75/100 on a scale of total support, 75/100 on emotional support (such as receiving advice), 76/100 in companionship (such as having people to spend time with), and 75/100 in instrumental aid (such as having someone to help if they are sick in bed).

Internet users in general score 3 points higher in total support, 6 points higher in companionship, and 4 points higher in instrumental support. A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day tends to score an additional 5 points higher in total support, 5 points higher in emotional support, and 5 points higher in companionship, than internet users of similar demographic characteristics. For Facebook users, the additional boost is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married or cohabitating with a partner.

Social media users are much more politically engaged than most people.

The survey was conducted over the November 2010 elections. At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  

Compared with other Internet users, and users of other social platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote. Participants in LinkedIn were the most politically active.

The report contains a wealth of detailed information but I hope this summary has been helpful. Any surprises?

In a social media world filled with questionable research and lightweight infographics, this is research we can really use. I’m proud to be able to provide an advance summary of this report to the {grow} community.

Here is the report summary of data from more than 1,000 European B2B purchasing agents.  What are your main take-aways from this research?

The dominance of ‘traditional’ online

Despite the rising popularity of social media, “traditional online” channels of supplier websites, search and emails are those most used by buyers.

68% of buyers said they consulted supplier websites, while 65% used search engines to find the information they needed to support their purchase decision. The use of social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and Facebook all grew (Facebook, in fact, doubled in popularity from 2010 to 2011) but they are still much less frequently used than the ‘traditional online’ methods. Of course, this does not prove that social media is on the wane. A Google search frequently leads to a link provided by a social media network even if the buyer does not start there.

The youth factor

Splitting the data between under-30s and over-30s shows the inevitable tendency of younger buyers to use the newer channels — the under-30s were three times more likely to use blogs to help them select suppliers, for example — suggesting that social media usage will only increase as one generation gradually succeeds the other. But in the short term, it would appear that investing in SEO and websites should still command the lion’s share of the marketing budget.

A growing hunger for information

Comparing results from last year shows a significant growth in the number of information channels used by buyers. This is a clear sign that we are moving from the traditional outbound marketing model [where we used to broadcast information in the hope that some of it would stick] to an inbound model [where buyers choose what information they need and go and find it themselves online]. This means that there is a greater appetite for information – and therefore a greater burden on the brands to create more content of all kinds, in order to satisfy this hunger. It is clear that companies with a structured, considered programme for creating whitepapers, videos, blogs and the like are going to be the ones more likely to appear on buyers’ radar as they do their online research.

Are webinars coming of age?

One of the most dramatic change in behaviour will interest marketers who run their own events, because we have seen the proportion of buyers who used offline events when seeking purchase information fall dramatically. Last year, one in three buyers attended an event as part of their information gathering; in 2011 that proportion had almost halved to just 18%. This was accompanied by – although not necessarily caused by – an equally marked rise in the use of online events or webinars. One in ten buyers used this channel last year; in 2011 that rose to 27%, almost a threefold increase

There could be many reasons. But it is reasonable to assume that buyers are getting more used to webinars and that brands are creating many more of them. But perhaps the most interesting observation is that this is a classic case of digitisation; of digital technology creating a version of something that is utterly distinct from its offline counterpart.

But this is only part of the picture. In terms of influence, webinars do not come close to real events, which were rated as the most influential information source across all buying stages with 46% of buyers giveng them a rating of 9 or 10 for influence.

A two-tier Europe?

One of the improvements of this year’s Buyersphere Report was to include and compare the responses of 500 business buyers in France, Germany, Benelux and Italy. B2B brands are increasingly operating on a pan-European basis and we need to understand cultural and behavioural differences.

These differences emerged most strongly when we looked at the social media information sources used. In Germany and the UK, 48% and 46% of buyers respectively used social media tools during the buying process; this compared to just 22%, 26% and 35% of French, Benelux and Italian respondents. The use of traditional online, by contrast, was consistent across all five, varying only between 88% and 93%. In the UK, 16% of buyers used Facebook at some point in their research, compared with only 5% of Benelux buyers.

Attitudes to sharing

Another fascinating insight was the attitudes towards forwarding information. While tools like Twitter and Facebook are very efficient at quickly spreading information through friend networks, they are not the preferred options. Only 9% said they used Facebook “very often” to share professional information, whilst 27% used the company intranet and 44% used email with the same level of frequency.

But how willing are users to share their own data? Marketers often agonise over whether to allow their content to spread freely or to use it to generate leads by insisting on a data capture form. The Report suggests we should tread carefully, with 55% of buyers discouraged ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ often from downloading content by the content owner’s insistence on data capture. There were geographical differences here too: 22% of UK buyers said they were discouraged ‘very’ often, compared to 10-12% in Germany, France and Belgium.

If you would like to download the free Base One research, you can find the report at:  www.b2bmarketing.net/buyersphere11.

What are your conclusions from this interesting report?

Optimism about the economy and the use of social media pervade a new report called the Small Business Success Index, a survey sponsored by Network Solutions® and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.  A few highlights from this wide-ranging report:

Technology investments on the rise. One way that small businesses responded to improving sales last year was to return to investing in technology. The perceived importance of internet business solutions (IBS) such as websites grew in the past six months; 42 percent consider IBS as highly important to their success, compared to only 33 percent back in June of 2010, which was actually the lowest percentage in five years.

Over half of small businesses (56 percent) now have websites, up from 46 percent a year ago (still an opportunity!). Social media is now used by almost a third of small businesses (31 percent), up from 24 percent a year ago and 12 percent two years ago.

Searching for Search. 27 percent of small businesses have a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, up from 19 percent a year ago. The only internet business solution in the survey that dropped is the purchase of online advertising in directories, a category that may be affected by the ability to use SEO and social media to find customers without spending. However, many small businesses plan to add online directory ads in the future.

Small business continues to embrace social media. There is almost universal awareness among small business owners of Facebook and Twitter, while half are aware of LinkedIn. The most commonly used social media sites are Facebook (used by 27 percent of all small businesses) and LinkedIn (18 percent). The growth in social media is not cutting into investments in company websites, and is actually contributing to their expansion; 62 percent of social media users feel their use of this medium has no effect on their web investments, while 27 percent believe it will result in greater spending (only 9 percent would spend less or forgo their website).

…But are still confused about it. Small businesses are still grappling with how to get the most out of social media, not surprising because so many users are “newbies.” Owners more often feel that their use of social media has fallen short of expectations (36 percent) than exceeded their expectations (9 percent), and this gap has increased over past survey waves. The main accomplishments from using social media include:

• staying engaged with customers
• developing higher awareness of the company
• identifying and attracting new customers.

Mixed financial results. When asked about their experiences to date with this medium, 63 percent of owners feel it has helped make their customers more loyal, but 56 percent feel it has taken up more time than they expected. Summing up the bottom-line, 25 percent of small business owners estimate that their investment in social media has made a profit while 15 percent estimate they have lost money; the remainder (46 percent) feel they broke even.

Mobile is on the way, maybe. Owners are learning to deploy social media in a mobile context. Of those who use social media already, 47 percent use social media to send text messages to customers, while the same share (47 percent) use their mobile devices to respond to other people’s comments on social media sites.

Despite their use of mobile devices for routine interactions with social media, small businesses are skeptical that a broader use of mobile marketing can provide tangible value to their businesses right now. Most owners consider mobile marketing to be “ahead of its time” (24 percent) for small business or “cutting edge” (36 percent). Only 15 percent of small business owners believe that mobile marketing would be “extremely” or “very valuable” to their enterprise, and another 20 percent feel it would be “somewhat” valuable. This attitude is largely unchanged after owners hear more about detailed uses of mobile marketing.

And you?  What are you seeing from small businesses out there?  Does this research reflect your own experiences?