by Jacob Morgan
The USC Marshall School of Business along with the Institute for Technology Management (CTM) have released this survey highlighting social media resistance from various small, mid, and large size companies. There are a few interesting statistics from the survey, but take them with a grain of salt. These numbers should be used more as benchmark numbers.
Most companies believe that online video, rss feeds, and podcasting are the most valuable tools a company can use in order to enhance a company image or increase productivity. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking then you’re right. Aren’t enhancing a company image and increase productivity 2 separate things? I think so. Business network sites came in 4th place followed closely by social media news releases.
Another intersting statistic is that 49% of all companies surveyed considered themselves to be significantly below the industry average in terms of new media and technology adoption. 40% said they considered themselves to be average and 11% said they were significantly above average. I don’t know about all of you, but personally, I would like to know what the average is. Is it something like “maintains a profile on twitter, facebook, linkedin, and uses them all twice a day?” Who knows.
Now an interesting question, towards what new media or technology tools do you think corporate/management has the highest amount of resistance towards? If you said employee blogs (28%)then you are correct. Actually social networking sites and employee blogs both tied for first place. Second place went to micromedia sites (25%), and third place went to online video sites such as youtube (23%). Are you at all surprised by these numbers? I actually thought that online video sites would have the highest amount of corporate resistance. I think companies are starting to realize how powerful employee blogs are becoming and they are actually getting a little scared of them, what do you think?
Finally, lack of basic understanding is the major reason for companies adoption rates to be what they are. In fact 53% of all companies surveyed said that this was the most important factor. Second was corporate issues and liability (48%) and third went to cost/staff issues (45%).
I encourage all of you to take a look at the power point as it is an interesting document. The responses are broken down into a bit more detail. I just tried to provide some higher level statistics. Again, try not to take the numbers to seriously as I’m sure there will be a lot of variation when conducting surveys such as these (not to mention various methods and validity issues). The report can be found here.
What were some of the statistics that jumped at you or at you or surprised you?
Thanks for reading
“USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.”
~David Letterman
