To the surprise of many, about 350 of the 500 actually are engaged one way or the other. Those are not necessarily publicly announced and promoted strategic initiatives - but active engagements through presences in LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo (Groups), Twitter, YouTube and many other sites.

The engagement ranges from company supported support groups, fan pages, marketing supported Twitter accounts and more. Interesting to note: The engagement is not dominated by marketing. Engagement is across all departments. Some are in support, some in marketing, others initiated by product management and yet others even in the logistics department.

Based on the current research we expect small businesses to follow within the next 5 years. As we compared the social media adoption curve with other technology adoptions such as Internet, Fax, computers, telephone, we estimate by 2025 about 90% of all businesses will use social media to strengthen customer relationships, feedback channels and influence.

It turns out by many social media is considered a strong competitive advantage and as such hardly discussed with anybody outside the organization.

The full report will be available soon.
If you are interested, just send an email to research3 at socialmedia-academy.com
ask for the "Fortune 500 research"

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

Republished with author's permission from original post .