February 10, 2007

Inc 500 Companies Understand Social Media

The Inc 500 - if you're not on it - you jealously wish you could be on it. There's a lot that goes into being on the Inc 500 - management, product, location, marketing & technology.

It's interesting to note that many of the Inc 500 companies are also tech users.

Inc 500 writes The nation's fastest-growing private companies are making use of social media -- including blogs, social networking and podcasts -- at a rate more than twice that of Fortune 500 companies, according to a new study.

The University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth's Center for Marketing Research surveyed companies from the 2006 Inc. 500 list, to gauge the level of familiarity and usage of six forms of social media -- blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking and wikis. Out of 121 respondents, generally managers and other senior-level executives, 42 percent claimed to be "very familiar" with social networking, followed by 38 percent with message boards and 31 percent with blogging.

What does this mean to you?

Your business can stay like it is and meander on. However, if you want to grow your business it's vital that you leverage social media tools to spread your information and receive information in as an efficient way as possible.

In this space I won't repeat the value of blogging, wikis and other tools. You've read about it here so much and in other places, I'm sure.

If technology scares you - that's fine - I'd highly recommend you discipline yourself to read up on social networking technologies (or web 2.0 as some like to call it).

With a local technology consultant who can help you and/or assign some young, smart person to follow the industry.

Another hot tip? Check out Social Media Club and Bill Sobel's New York Media Information Exchange Group.

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