Top social media tools adopted by B2B companies
Online social media is here to stay.
Facebook is the most popular global social networking site, as confirmed by Nielsen research. In May 2009, it had 144.3 million unique visitors. Twitter is also becoming very popular, having jumped from 1.2 million unique visitors in May last year to 18.2 million this May. And Linkedin is exceptionally popular with job seekers and recruiters.
Have professional service firms joined the online social circuit? Which tools are they using? Are Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin their top choices? Do they use these channels and tools mainly for recruitment purposes or do they also target clients?
To answer these questions, Manifesto reviewed 47 websites including those of Accenture, BCG, Capgemini, Deloitte, Grant Thorton, IBM Global Consulting, Mckinsey, Nielsen, TNS, Synovate.
First, we conducted an audit of the sites and tools featured on the websites of global management consultants, research companies, accounting firms and executive search firms. Then we looked at the primary function of these tools. (Refer to table)
| Digg | Social news site for people to discover and share content by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories |
| Delicious | Social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks |
| Social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets | |
| StumbleUpon | Website and content discovery service that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos, with personalised recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles |
| Social networking website | |
| Business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking | |
| Technorati | Real-time search engine for bloggers that collects, highlights, and distributes the global online conversation |
| Newsvine | Community-powered, collaborative journalism news website which draws content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press |
| Yahoo! Buzz | Community-based news article site that combines the features of social bookmarking and syndication through a user interface that allows editorial control; it helps to pick up popular search topics and showcases popular stories within those topics |
| Social news site on which users can post links to content on the Internet, which other users may then vote up or down, causing them to become more or less prominent on the Reddit home page | |
| YouTube | Video sharing website where users can upload and share videos |
And here are some of our observations:
- Have B2B companies jumped on the online social circuit? The answer is ‘not entirely, such are greater converts than others’.
- Are Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin their top choices? The answer is no. In fact, most B2B companies choose site and tools that are content-driven, rather than for social networking.
- Do they use them mainly for recruitment purposes or do they also target clients? The answer is mostly probably ‘both’. As the focus seems mostly content-driven, this would help raise the brand profile with clients and candidates alike.
- In general, video still seems to be an under-utilised medium.
- And lastly, we were a little surprised that the executive recruiters were not using social networking tools more than they currently do.
For more information, please contact Manifesto
Tel: +852 2526 1972
