Fortune 500’s Social Media Platform Use in 2015

October 28, 2015

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Social Media | Top Brands

UMassDartmouth-Fortune500-Social-Use-Oct2015Source: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research

    Notes: LinkedIn remains the most broadly used social network among the Fortune 500, with 93% of the companies analyzed maintaining an account, per the latest annual analysis from the University of Massachusetts. This year Glassdoor was measured for the first time, with 87% of companies active on their Glassdoor profiles. Beyond those platforms, Twitter (78%), Facebook (74%) and YouTube (64%) rounded out the top 5, with each dropping slightly from last year in usage. Meanwhile Instagram is the fastest-growing platform, up from 9% with an active presence in 2013 to 33% this year.

      Related: What Do Marketers Consider to be the Most Effective Types of Social Media Content?

        About the Data: A company was counted as having a presence on each platform if the primary corporation had an active account (activity within the past 30 days).

        The report notes that “Unlike LinkedIn, but similar to Foursquare, company Glassdoor accounts can be initially created by the company’s employees. The company is then able to “claim” the account in order to interact with reviewers and commenters. Four hundred and thirty-three (87%) of the 2015 F500 are active on their Glassdoor profiles. There are also 60 (12%) companies that… have not yet claimed their user-created account.”

        Some other methodology notes follow (the full details can be accessed by following the link above):

        “The following definition was used to locate 2015 F500 corporations with a social media presence: A company was counted as having a presence on each platform studied if the primary corporation had an active account (activity within the past 30 days).

        It is worth noting that there is evidence of usage of social media tools such as blogs inside these corporations. This research did not look at that subject, but instead focused on public-facing corporate blogs as a barometer of social media usage to engage the public.

        Due to the complexity of corporate legal structures in this group and no clear methodology on how subsidiaries have been located or analyzed by others, the research presented here continues to focus on the primary/listed corporation. While we acknowledge that mergers and acquisitions along with expansions have resulted in segments or subsidiaries with social media, our focus has consistently been at the corporate level.

        All corporations were analyzed using multiple steps. First, working from the published 2015 F500 list, all corporate home pages were examined for links to, or mention of, social media accounts. If a link wasn’t found on the company’s home page a search was performed using search engines. Any links resulting from these searches were followed and evaluated using the established criteria. This proved to be an effective method since additional social media accounts were located. The process was repeated for each social media platform.

        This year’s F500 included an acquisition of one F500 company by another: On July 1st MeadWestvaco (no.464) was officially acquired by West Rock (no.293). Though Fortune Magazine took note of this fact, it still included both companies since the acquisition had not yet taken place at the time of publication. For this study it was decided to remove MeadWestvaco. Therefore, this year’s report will be based on 499 companies.

        In 2015 F500 there are 9 corporations who do not use any of the social media platforms or tools examined in this study.”

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