In a study conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, information about the social media tools used and their success rates was collected from the Inc. 500 companies. Facebook, as expected, was the most widely used social media tool, but surprisingly, it is not the tool with the highest success rate.
According to the results of the study, for year 2010, 71 percent companies used Facebook, 59 percent used Twitter, 50 percent used blogging, 33 percent used online video and message or bulletin boards, 16 percent used podcasting, 6 percent used MySpace, 5 percent used foursquare and 18 percent companies did not use any of these social media tools.
Most companies using social media tools have found them successful. Message or bulletin boards and online video have the highest success rates at 93 percent. The success rate of blogging is 86 percent, Facebook 85 percent, Twitter 81 percent, foursquare 75 percent, podcasting 73 and MySpace 36 percent.
Due to high success rates, social media has become an important part of marketing strategy for most companies. 86 percent companies in the survey consider social media to be very important or at least somewhat important. 56 percent companies in the survey consider social media tools to be very important for their business, 30 percent consider them to be somewhat important, 9 percent consider them to be somewhat unimportant and only 4 percent find them very unimportant.
The high popularity of social media marketing reflects its importance, and finding the right mix of social media sites can work wonders for a business.