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Study: Companies Say Social Media Has Transformative Results

If you're still sitting around wondering whether you should use social media, you need to start clicking on the links in this post. Because honey, the social media train has left the station!

Forty-one percent of 500 companies surveyed by the IT consultancy Avanade, say social media has the potential to transform their customer relationships, improve their reputations and increase sales. That's a sea change in corporate attitude if there ever was one! Yet, the company's press release presents a gloomy headline - no doubt hoping to drum up some new consulting for Avande. Hey, why not: they paid for the report. :>)

According to the report, companies around the globe said that:
o Social media technologies have the potential to transform the way companies build and manage relationships with their customers.
o Early adopters are reporting improved customer relationships, better corporate reputation and increased sales.
o Businesses face competitive risks if they fail to embrace the technology going forward in a controlled and strategic manner.

Here's more good news about social media and the sea change it is bringing about in corporate marketing. Peter Kim and Mashable have compiled lists of major brands that are using social media.

And here's a wiki listing major corporations and associations are Twitter.

Categories: Alternative Marketing, B.L. Ochman, Internet strategy, Marketing Strategy, Must-Read Articles, Social Media Marketing, Studies, Surveys

Tags: social media marketing BL Ochman's 12 Tenets of Social Media Marketing corporate social media marketing alternative marketing

BL Ochman | Sep 8 08 10:20 | TrackBack (0)

Comments

How could I have missed your "12 Tenets of Social Media Marketing"?

It's must reading for all. I'm letting my readers know about it. Fabulous, B.L.

Posted by: Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound at September 9, 2008 12:43 PM

wow! thanks joan. i guess the time was right for me to run it again.
it first ran quite a while ago.
BL

Posted by: BL Ochman at September 9, 2008 2:21 PM

I think the biggest shift is still yet to come. The tipping point will be when tools become available to help individuals and both large and small companies engage with social media.

Right now social media presents a somewhat fuzzy and fairly noisy information space that requires serious focus by savvy individuals to make it work for you in terms of marketing, pr, and branding.

I think tools that help manage the process will make it a lot more accessible to people and companies. Of course I'm biased since we just released a tool that I think is part of a first wave of these kinds of tools VibeMetrix, (http://vibemetrix.com).

I think not having a record, accountability, and a clear sense of what's been done, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks stopping companies from adopting social media marketing and pr techniques. It has to be more than just "give everyone a blog or twitter account", since that leaves no unifying objective and no accountability.

I think our site is in this first wave of trying to tame this problem. There are lots of other useful and valuable tools out there, like trackur, radian6, and others that I think are addressing these similar issues from slightly different angles.

Beyond just engaging with social media and/or monitoring, we hope to bring the idea of accountability, tracking what's been done, monitoring your engagement, understanding who are the influencers in your space and gradually improving our monitoring and search to make it more and more relevant for your particular needs.

I think those that dismiss social media and social media marketing are going to be surprised what will result from those that engage with and direct those energies.

Posted by: mikepk at September 9, 2008 7:58 PM

Great Blog Post, I agree, Social Media is becoming the preferred method of communicating. I just wrote a blog post on "Social Media For Health Care Professionals" addressing some of the points you covered.
http://blog.business-bits.com/?p=12

Jim Farrell

Posted by: Jim Farrell at September 12, 2008 10:16 AM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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