Corporate marketers have come a long way in their adoption of social tools and sites in the past few years, but they still have much to learn. One less obvious source of social media marketing experience is nonprofits.
According to annual survey data from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, charities have been ahead of both large and small businesses in adoption and awareness of social marketing since 2007. As of 2009, 97% of large charitable organizations studied were using some form of social media.
By contrast, the Center for Marketing Research found that 80% of companies in the Inc. 500—a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US—used social media marketing in 2009. The Fortune 500 lagged further behind.
Charities’ usage of social media showed many of the same trends as that of US companies, but with adoption faster and more widespread. Charities took heavily to video blogging in 2008 before slowing down in 2009; the Inc. 500 did the same, to a lesser extent. And charities flooded to social networking sites and Twitter even more quickly than corporate marketers.
If charities continue as trendsetters in this area, their plans for future social media usage indicate Twitter will remain a major marketing channel, and blogging will also continue its importance.
Some corporate marketers have already taken a page from the nonprofit playbook by touting their community-friendly initiatives, like Dawn dish soap’s Everyday Wildlife Champions, which shows off Dawn’s longtime commitment to helping wildlife, or the Pepsi Refresh Project, which donates money to charity.
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Check out today’s other article, “How Affluents Use Mobile for Shopping and Buying.”