Fortune 500 Do not Use Social Media

According to a new study by the Center for Marketing Research at Dartmouth, adoption rates of  popular social media tools by the Fortune 500 appears to be leveling off, with little or no change in the past year.

  In 2008, the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth released one of the first studies of the Fortune 500adoption and repeated that study every year since. The study has been expanded to include the usage of the fastest growing social media tools – Facebook and Twitter.

According to the latest study, close to one third of these corporate giants are without either a Twitter or Facebook account. While the percent of companies blogging remains at 23%, that number now represents 114 companies with blogs instead of the 116 recorded last year.

Key Findings from the Dartmouth Study:

• 23% of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog; representing a leveling off since 2010 and only a 1% increase over the 2009 study.
• Fortune 500 companies are blogging at a lower rate than other business groups, specifically the Inc. 500. In 2010, 50% of the Inc. 500 had corporate blogs and in 2009 45% had externally-facing corporate blogs.
• 62% of Fortune 500 primary companies have corporate Twitter accounts. This is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.
• 58% of the 2010 Fortune 500 have a Facebook presence. There is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.
• Specialty Retail stores are most likely to have a blog. These include Home Depot, Best Buy, Toys-R-Us and BJ’s Wholesale.
• 31% of the 2011 Fortune 500 do not have a Twitter account or a Facebook presence.

“These results may signal a leveling off and possibly retrenchment when it comes to the adoption of social media among the 2011 Fortune 500,” says Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Senior Fellow at Dartmouth. “Given the Fortune 500 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.”

Download a PDF version of the Dartmouth study here.