The Third Annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up, which includes new data provided by social media monitoring firm Visible Technologies, examined the Fortune Global 100's use of social networking platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, for the first time, Google Plus.
Data was collected in February 2012, with 23 of the companies coming from Asia-Pacific, 29 from the US, 45 from Europe and three from Latin America.
This year, 87 per cent of these companies are using at least one of the major social platforms to
communicate with online stakeholders, with YouTube enjoying the strongest surge in popularity. The branded channels on YouTube each average more than 2 million views and 1,669 subscribers.
Despite YouTube's climb, Twitter is still the most popular platform for companies, and for online discussions about these companies. Eighty-two of the companies have at least one Twitter account, while each company was mentioned an average of 55,970 times on Twitter.
The study also found that 74 of the Fortune 100 companies have a Facebook page, of which 93 per cent are updated weekly. On Google Plus, 48 of the companies now have a corporate page.
“This year’s study shows an interesting trend in the increase of content creation among the Fortune Global 100,” said Burson-Marsteller Worldwide CEO Mark Penn. “Since 2010, it has been interesting to see the companies’ use evolve from broadcasting to engagement to content creation. Companies are now integrating more original multimedia content to share with followers on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.”
Users have also grown increasingly acclimated to the notion of 'befriending' or 'following' companies on social media. Since 2011, the average number of followers per corporate Twitter account has nearly tripled to 14,709 from 5,076. On Facebook, the average number of likes per company page has increased by 275 per cent since 2010 to 152,646 likes in 2012.
“With predictions that video content is going to comprise of about 90 per cent of internet traffic in the next few years it makes sense that there’s been a surge in companies investing in video-based platforms, such as YouTube," said Carly Yanco, head of digital, Burson-Marsteller Australia. “It’s also great to see that a large proportion of companies are responding to, and engaging with, their audiences online, rather than just establishing platforms to push out content."
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