Do top US corporations use social media? Is the business world leveraging new media technologies to engage customers? The answer is definitely positive according to a new research study on 2009 Fortune 500 companies and their use of social media tools, like blogs and Twitter and authored by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson.

Photo credit: Kheng Ho Toh and Dmitriy Shironosov
Each year Fortune Magazine compiles a list of the largest US corporations, which are named the Fortune 500 given their size and wealth. Due to the hugely influential role that these companies play in the corporate world, studying their use of new media technologies offers valuable insights into the future of social media communication technologies and approaches.
That is why every year, Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson take Fortune 500 companies as a testing ground to analyze the use of blogs and Twitter inside the corporate world.
In their latest report, published here, these are their reported highlights:
What emerges from this research is the steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies, which emphasizes the increasing importance of social media inside the business world.
Specifically, this report suggests that Fortune 500 companies leverage social media technologies like blogs and Twitter as a mean to:
Given that Fortune 500 companies stand as an established model for business success, it is indeed strategically critical for you to examine the data inside this report and extract valuable, solid insights that may help you develop an effective social media marketing strategy.
Online publishing is in many respects the new frontier for those who have a voice, a business, a desire to communicate or change things for the better. It potentially enables any individual connected to the net to be a two-way communication hub capable of sending out information and equipped with technologies to listen and respond. But to transform such revolutionary opportunity into a truly effective marketing vehicle, or into a
Website usability testing identifies a precise methodology devoted to uncover specific bugs, idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the way that website design impacts the effective use, legibility, navigation, and user experience of your website. In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find the best free website usability testing tools available out there.
Heat map of MasterNewMedia homepage created with Feng-GUI
Website usability testing is indeed a critical component of any effective online publishing strategy.
Does your online business use a disruptive innovation approach? In other words: have you ever considered getting a huge advantage over your competition by developing a business strategy that is a completely different way from what everyone else in your field does?
Photo credit: Kheng Guan Toh
Disruptive innovation is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the
Web widgets are tiny applications that allow you to easily distribute your content across other blogs and web sites, free of charge. Web widgets work just like YouTube videos: you can place a widget on your web site and let readers grab the embed code and redistribute your content with a few clicks. In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find the best tools and services to create a widget for
How do you build a personal brand around yourself? Can one really create a business online simply by sharing her knowledge online?
Photo credit: Robin Good
A couple months ago I was invited by Nokia to join, together with Teemu Arina, a discussion and review session with their online publishing and social media teams focusing on how to improve and steer the future strategy and direction of Nokia online communication strategy.
This
What is real-time online ad bidding? Is this really an additional opportunity for web publishers to better monetize their ad inventory?
Photo credit
Although many web publishers consider email newsletters an old-fashioned way to update their readers and customers, in my opinion, email messages remain THE most familiar, intimate, direct and effective way to communicate with anyone you know. As such they represent one of the most powerful means to create and share value online and one of the few effective methods to start the "conversations" we keep hearing more and more about
Viral media is a flawed way to think about distributing content through informal or "ad hoc" networks of consumers and the harsh reality is that advertisers completely fail to understand the process whereby a content is redistributed over the web. Thus, and in sharp contrast with what they claim, advertisers are completely clueless about how to build a viral marketing campaign and completely ignore what metrics should be deployed to
Email distribution and newsletter mailing services are among the best and most utilized email marketing tools available out there. They allow you to get in touch with your audience in a direct and intimate way trough autoresponders, direct messages, and any type of newsletter format that can be used to market your ideas, or your online product or service. In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find the best commercial newsletter
Online ad pricing and advertising trends for 2009 showed an encouraging recovery from the economic downturn that hit publishers in 2008. Throughout 2009 ad pricing had been steadily growing till reaching the top in December 2009, where ad prices were even higher than pre-recession.
Photo credit Pablo631
The PubMatic Ad Price Index 2009 states a 111% increase from the last quarter of 2008 to the last months of 2009. But which
How can online journalists improve their design, usability and content creation skills? In this MasterNewMedia report journalist Eric Ulken shares some valuable insights on what online journalists can learn from web interaction designers to improve the way they create, layout and distribute their content.
Photo credit: Taketorise Computer
Usability and design should always be major concerns when you decide to post or share content on the web. But what if you
Communicating via email in a direct, intimate and informal way remains one of the best ways to market and promote your content, services and products online. This is why the most effective online businesses still rely on crafting quality newsletters and email updates to keep their fans and customers updated, entertained and happy. In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find the best free email newsletter distribution and mailing services available
What future and opportunities for online news? "After more than five years of Wikipedia building both its content and its brand as a "go-to" source for freshly updated topic-oriented content that dominates search engine results, it dawns on some folks in the news business that perhaps there is a business model in there somewhere."
Photo credit: juliengron
Content media expert, and Content Nation author John Blossom, analyzes AP recent moves and where
To organize, coordinate, promote and manage live events, whether physical or online, there is a new emerging set of web-based event management tools that can truly help and augment your communication and marketing efforts. But how do you choose among all these services which one is best for you? In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find out which are the best web-based event management tools out there and what characterize
Is online collaborative writing the recipe to change the academic publishing process? Are blogs and wikis going to subvert the way academics publish and distribute their work?
Photo credit Tecnologia Pyme.
Academics have long operated within a system of peer reviewed scholarship. The research process is seen as incomplete until a group of anonymous experts has commented on and approved a paper prepared according to specific criteria. Only then can the work
Social television is an emerging new media term used to refer to a new form of television technology that supports and integrates social interaction, recommendations, ratings, reviews and interactive participation among viewers via text chat, audio or even video-conferencing.
Photo credit: Michele Piacquadio
While the social element of TV is not new, the term social TV is relatively new and used to describe a new breed of TV services that integrate other Search engine optimization (SEO) is a specialty that is intricately woven into many other disciplines: website design / development, information architecture, copywriting, website usability, analytics and conversion analysis, etc. Successful SEO hybrids ...
Read more...

Do you know when your Windows machine becomes a hog? What can you do in such frustrating situations? Before you start formatting your PC for the nth time, read on.
Read more...

US marketing executives were much more optimistic about the economic outlook in February 2010 than they were the year before, when the recession was in full swing, and many were planning to increase budgets, according to the "Marketing Trends Report ...
Read more...

Over the past couple days, we've been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let's address why some of the RWW staff - and many of our ...
Read more...
26 percent of US consumers watch TV programming online more than once a week, according to a new report from In-Stat titled "OTT Video Platforms, Devices, and Consumer Expectations." And more and more of these consumers watch online video in the ...
Read more...
The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly ...
Read more...

Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say AOL. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at ...
Read more...

What sites send Bing the most traffic? Here's a surprise. According to Hitwise, Google is Bing's fourth largest referring source. Below are the top five sites that drive traffic to Bing, or "upstream" to Bing, as Hitwise calls it.
Read more...

When it comes to AdWords, Google says to create separate, mobile-focused campaigns so you can optimize keywords, ad text, and landing pages for people using mobile devices. Google shared an interesting case study this week looking at Razorfish's ...
Read more...

In what the company called Blogger's biggest announcement in several years, Google introduced a versatile template designer this morning that opens up a wide array of creative high-quality designs to the millions of users on the platform. The launch ...
Read more...

That didn't long. Leave it to marketers to find a way to use any innovative new web service to promote their own ends. The latest example? A Chatroulette contest launched by international clothing brand French Connection. According to contest rules, ...
Read more...

Having a solid keyword monitoring tool in your SEM toolbox is absolutely crucial for proper PPC management. Remember, paid search operates in a constantly evolving environment.
Read more...
The Guardian believes that the advent of a vast amount of new government data in the U.K could provide media companies with entirely new business opportunities.
Read more...
Here are the three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce web sites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to ...
Read more...
I’ve seen this type of discussion come up many times within my community, and in others. When someone breaks a site rule and is "reprimanded" for it, they will often scream about their Freedom of Speech, guaranteed by the United States ...
Read more...

Hitwise shows Bing gaining share for the third straight month, and its 9.7% share of searches in February was up 4% over its January numbers.
Read more...

A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren't very active.
Read more...
Facebook redesigned at the beginning of February, moving its search box from the right side to the top middle of its home page, and it seems to have paid off, with the company's U.S. search queries growing 10 percent in February, according to ...
Read more...

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google's search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its ...
Read more...
More and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile devices. Take advantage of this trend by making sure that your ad campaigns are opted in to show on mobile devices with full internet browsers. If you'd like to take things to the next ...
Read more...
|
Contact information: |