Companies ride on social media buzz

RESEARCH   SOCIAL MEDIA   BURSON-MARSTELLER

Global – Almost 80% of the Fortune Global 100 companies are using at least one of the top social media platforms to engage with stakeholders, a Burson-Marsteller study found.

About 65% of the Fortune Global 100 have active accounts on Twitter, 54% have a Facebook fan page, 50% a YouTube channel, and 33% employ corporate blogs.

In Asia Pacific, companies are increasingly using social media to engage customers and are more likely to use corporate blogs than other forms of social media.

Bob Pickard (pictured), president & CEO of Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific, said Asian companies are primarily focused on using local platforms to reach local audiences, which limits their use of Facebook and Twitter.

“As Asia’s top companies continue to extend and deepen their operations beyond their domestic markets, we can expect their use of top international social media platforms to increase,” Pickard said.

Charlie Pownall, lead digital strategist of Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific added that Asian companies have proved more conservative, remaining concerned about resourcing, costs, measurement and the potential reputational risks.

“As their domestic audiences continue to move online, and as the technology infrastructure improves across the region, Asian companies will come to use social media as the core business tool that it has become in the US and Europe,” Pownall said.

The study also found that stakeholders are listening and engaging on social media platforms - corporate Twitter accounts averaged 1,489 followers, while each Facebook fan page averaged 40,884 fans.

Conducted between November 2009 and January 2010, the study surveyed the top 100 companies of the 2009 Fortune Global 500 companies from USA, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

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