Social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed, according to a survey summary of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, which compared corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008 by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. The results of the survey also indicate that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media within the fastest-growing Inc. 500 has nearly doubled in the past 12 months.


In their 2007 study (using the 2006 Inc. 500 list) 8% of the Fortune 500 companies (biggest) were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500 (fastest-growing). Their latest study (using the 2007 Inc. 500 list) revealed that today just 11.6% of the Fortune 500 companies are having a public blog (a 3.6% increase) while 39% of the Inc. 500 companies are blogging (a 20% increase).


The social media that continues to be the most familiar to the Inc. 500 is social networking with 57% of respondents in 2008 claiming to be “very familiar with it” (compared to 42% in 2007). Familiarity is related to usage. Even those forms of social media less familiar to the participants are still used by at least 20% of them. Just over one quarter of the Inc. 500 reported social media was very important to their business/marketing strategy in 2007. That number has increased to 44% just one year later.


You can read the resume of the study.