Whether or not you, or the brands you work with, have a social media strategy you have to admit it’s hard these days not to talk digital without hearing someone throw around terms like word-of-mouth, seeding, driving the conversation, socially enabled technology. ‘Fishing where the fish are’ is the latest. But, it seems like it’s big business who’ve really taken the bait this time… A recent study by the Centre for Marketing Research (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) about the usage of social media in corporations indicates just that.

The study compares 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 executive summary can be downloaded here. For those of you who can’t be bothered to click through here’s some headline stats to get you excited. 

• 49% of corporations use social networks in 2008, compared with 27% in 2007
• 39% use blogs in 2008
• 23% of corporations don’t use any social media, fallen sharply from 43% in 2007
• 44% believe social media is ‘very important’ for their business, compared to 26% in 2007

Tags: adoption, Centre for Marketing Research, enabled technology, social media, social media strategy, Social Networks, socially enabled technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth