Blog Post: Fortune 100 Companies Flock To Twitter

A recent study was published about the use of Facebook, blogs and Twitter by the Fortune 100. While the usage stats in themselves are interesting, I think that there is something all together that is missing here.

First, the numbers:

• 54% of Fortune 100 companies were using Twitter to engage with their stakeholders
• 32% were using a blog
• 29% were actively using a Facebook fan page
• 22% were using two channels
• 76% of the “one channel” companies use only twitter
• 17% were using  three channels

While I’m excited to see so many huge companies jump on the social media bandwagon, it is clear that there is a heavy case of “shiny object syndrome” going on here.  I have a hard time that twitter is the most effective social media communications platform for the 76% of companies that are using it as their sole channel.

This also forces me to assume that a vast majority of these companies can’t be doing nearly as much listening as they are talking.

While Twitter may be the hottest new thing since Facebook’s traffic beat out MySpace, but just because every morning news program spouts on about Twitter every 30 seconds doesn’t mean that this is where your audience is.

The New York Times recently had an article out exactly who is driving Twitter’s popularity. Some of the numbers would likely surprise a lot of those Fortune 100 Twitter account managers.

After all, the most important rule of any communications strategy, digital or analog is L-I-S-T-E-N!