Burson-Marsteller recently released the results of a survey they conducted to determine where companies engage the most using social media tools.  The study indicates that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.

It’s interesting to find that companies are not just posting and tweeting randomly.   Real conversations are going on.  

For an evidence-based approach to social media, the reports suggest the following 9 tips:

1.  Monitor your own, and your competitors, social media presence.

2.  Get top management “buy-in”. 

3.  Develop a social media strategy.

4.  Define and publish a social media policy.

5.  Develop internal structure.

6.  Contribute to the community.

7.  Participate in good times and in bad.

8.  Be perpared to respond in real time.

9.  Beyond monitoring, measure the impact of social media engagement.

You don’t have to be a big company to harness the power of social media engagement.  The rules are the same for any size business.  In fact, social media has leveled the playing field in such a way that a small company or individual can have the same kind of reach as a bigger company by using social media tools.   But you do have to follow the rules.  If you are the top management then you must agree with yourself that you will be committed to using the social media tools you select.  Do publish your social media policy even if you are the only one who will see it at first.  This will give you a guide to help you remember what you said you would do.  Don’t think that just because your business is local that you don’t have competitors.  You do.  Social media tools provide a great way of finding out what they are doing.

So, what is your social media tool of choice?  How is your engagement through that channel improving your business outcomes?  Have you performed a social media checkup lately?

I don’t know about you but the fact that Twitter is now profitable is a weight off my shoulders. Over the years we’ve seen these companies become a major force for changing the way people communicate. So, what if Twitter were to go under, wouldn’t that alter the lives of many. You bet it would! It would alter the lives of around 58 million people. That’s the number of people who have a presence on Twitter. Let’s say only half of those people are active, that’s still over 25 million. You just can’t buy that many impressions within a reasonable marketing and advertising budget.

You can go the Business Week article to read the announcement for yourself but briefly, it says:

1. Twitter inked a multi-year deal with Google and Microsoft that is worth around $25 million
2. The deal makes tweets available to show up in searches on Google and Bing
3. This deal confirms that Twitter is a valuable entity and will be around for a while
4. Tweets will make searches even more content rich with up to the minute information from real people

The good news is that if you are using Twitter as a marketing tool your tweets might show up in Google more frequently than your website. I’m not a web analyst or anything but it seems to me that if a few thousand people are tweeting about you then that might show up in searches faster than if you are blogging or have a website. Are there any Google experts out there who can give us some insight on how tweets might be indexed?

My biggest question right now is what will happen to sites like search.twitter.com. I always advise my clients to use this type of site to search tweets. If you can search in Google and get a multi-layered result, why go through the extra trouble of having searches on other sites. It seems redundant.

The other problem that I see for business is this whole big brother (meaning customers) is really watching now. Who doesn’t use Google? Now, current customers and potential new customers might find out in real time what people think about your business. Moreover, what about people looking for jobs? Already, HR recruiters might look at Facebook or MySpace to determine if they want to hire a person. Will your tweets now be easy to obtain by recruiters just by doing a Google search?

What do you think? Could this be the best deal of the century? Or, will it be a huge headache for marketers and advertisers?

Joseph Jaffee, over at crayon, has a lot to say about social media.  Listen in as he talks about Jet Blue’s big news.  They just went over a million followers!!  Why should you care?

First, following and being follwed is the object of the game with social media.  Isn’t this the same thing that one wants to happen when the press release goes out or when the TV commercial airs? 

Second, no business is too small to benefit from the energy that comes from having a social media campaign that actually helps them acquire and keeep customers.

Finally, Joesph is honest in his assessment that we don’t know if one million is the magic bullet especially in light of the fact that they only follow back about one hundred thousand.  As Joesph points out, Jet Blue could be making lots of mistakes but if other companies are holding back because they don’t want to make mistakes then that’s a mistake.

Listen to the podcast to hear 5 reasons to use Twitter no matter the size of your company or brand.    Jet Blue Has 1MM Followers On Twitter And You Don’t