A new report by Burson-Marsteller measures social media use among the top 100 of the 2010 Fortune Global 500 Companies (the world’s largest corporations) and reveals that Twitter is in the lead.
Here’s the breakdown of the most popular social media platforms for the Fortune Global 100 (FG100):
- 77% of the FG100 have a Twitter account (up 18% from last year)
- 61% have a Facebook page
- 57% are using YouTube
- 36% are using corporate blogs
Many companies are using a combination of the above: 25% of FG100 companies (and 34% of U.S. FG100 companies) use all four platforms studied.
Twitter statistics for FG100 companies
Regional variations can be seen in the growth of Twitter use and Twitter ‘followers’ among the FG100, both of which have been largely driven by Asia-Pacific companies within the past year:
- 67% of Asia-Pacific companies have Twitter accounts, showing a dramatic rise from only 40% in 2010; follower numbers quadrupled from last year
- 83% of European companies now have Twitter accounts, up from 71% in 2010; follower numbers more than tripled
- US companies with Twitter accounts remained at 72% (no change from last year), but number of followers per account more than doubled
Many FG100 added corporate Twitter accounts in the previous year, now averaging 5.8 accounts per company (up from 4.2 in 2010). FG100 companies use Twitter in a variety of ways: to provide company news/updates (88%), customer service (40%), to offer deals (28%) and to release career and job information (10%).
While Marketing Profs notes that companies reach ‘relatively smaller’ audiences with Twitter (on average, FG100 companies have more Facebook ‘likes’ than Twitter ‘followers’), many are using Twitter interactively:
- Among the FG100 using Twitter, 67% now use the “@mention”, up from 38% in 2010
- 66% of US Twitter accounts use the “@mention” tool, up from 43% in 2010
- European companies saw the greatest growth here, with 62% of accounts using “@mentions” (a 148% increase from last year)
- Companies are also retweeting more – 57% of the FG100 with Twitter accounts retweet posts, up from 32% in 2010 (a 78% increase)
- Asia-Pacific and European companies were the standouts with retweeting posts, increasing 121% and 117%, respectively
Finally, 8 out of 10 companies are being talked about on Twitter, a 90% increase over last year.
Facebook statistics for FG100 companies
61% of FG100 companies have at least one Facebook page. The average number of Facebook pages managed by FG100 companies more than tripled in the previous year, from 1.2 pages in 2010 to 4.2 in 2011.
US companies drove growth in numbers of Facebook pages per company from an average of 1.9 pages in 2010, to 5.3 in 2011 (up 179% from last year!) Asia-Pacific companies increased Facebook pages roughly 18%, from an average of 4.9 pages in 2010, to 5.8 in 2011.
FG100 companies are also updating their Facebook pages more often – 84% of FG100 Facebook pages had made company posts within the last week, up from 59% in 2010.
The average number of “likes” per Facebook page increased 115% globally, from 40,884 in 2010 to 87,979 in 2011. Asia-Pacific companies led the largest increase (406%) in “likes” and US companies saw their number of “likes” nearly double over the last year, while European companies saw little or no change from last year’s numbers.
Marketing Profs reports that US FG100 companies are significantly more interactive on Facebook than the average FG100 company:
- 89% of US companies allow fans to post on their page walls, compared with 74% of all FG100 companies
- 72% of US FG100 companies respond to fans’ wall posts, compared with 57% of all FG100 companies
Data for this report was collected from November 2010 to January 2011 based on companies’ social media activity on Twitter, Facebook and a variety of other social channels. See the full Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up report here: 2011 Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study
