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Recently Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and the Society for New Communications Research conducted a survey of 140 officials who are actively using Social Communities in their businesses called The 2008 Tribalization of Business Study.  The findings are a great glimpse into how companies of all sizes are using Social Media to accomplish all sorts of things.

Who

The size of the companies ranged anywhere from having annual revenues over a billion dollars to annual revenues under a million.  The first thing that stood out to us was the fact that of the respondents polled, over half of the companies had begun their involvement in a Community within the last year.  This clearly shows how new the idea of utilizing Social Media to engage consumers is.

Where

79% said their focus was external, so that would include utilizing a Social Network such as Facebook or Next2Friends.

Objectives

“Generate More Word of Mouth” rated high on the list of business objectives for utilizing a Social Community, as did “Increase Brand Awareness”, “Increase Customer Loyalty”, and “Bring Outside Ideas Into the Organization”.  What was interesting here was that these four highest rated objectives also correlated with the four highest outcomes from their involvement in Social Media. Have a look:

How

So how did they arrive at these conclusions?  Mostly web analytics that measured user interaction.  Notice that the 6 highest factors on the following graph are all simple quantitative measurements of subscriber numbers, repeat visitors and comments etc.

Conclusion

Utilizing Social Networks is a relatively new phenomenon for businesses.  But in areas that were once harder to gain ground they are finding success.  Things like increased brand perception and word of mouth referrals are on the rise, and with somewhat measurable results.  Indeed, tapping into this most basic instinct of “Tribalism” has truly just begun and should continue to occupy a greater part of any company’s plan to reach people.

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