The Fortune 500 And Social Media: A Longitudinal Study Of Blogging And Twitter Usage By America’s Largest Companies - Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.d., Eric Mattson Ceo, Financial Insite Page 2
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17Due to the complexity of corporate legal structures in this group and no clear
methodology on how subsidiaries have been located or analyzed by others, the research
presented here continues to focus on the primary/listed corporation.
In addition, it is worth noting that there is evidence of usage of social media such as blogs
inside of large companies like the F500. This research did not look at that subject but
instead focused on public-facing blogs as a barometer of usage.
All companies were analyzed using multiple steps. First, working from the published
2009 Fortune 500 list, all corporate home pages were examined for links to, or mention
of, corporate blogs. If none were found, a search on the company’s site was conducted
using the key word “blog”. Any links resulting from that search were followed and
evaluated using the established criteria.
If no blogs were located on the home page or through a site search, other search engines
were used. Both Google and Technorati (a leading blog-focused search engine) were
employed to check for corporate blogs using key words that included the primary/listed
company name and the word “blog”. This proved to be an effective method since
additional blogs were located.
Similarly, all companies were analyzed through multiple steps to locate corporate Twitter
accounts. First, working from the 2009 Fortune 500 list, all corporate home pages were
examined for links to, or mention of, a corporate Twitter account. If none were found, a
search on the company’s website was conducted using the keyword “Twitter.” Any links
resulting from that search were followed and evaluated using the established criteria.
If no Twitter accounts were located on the home page or through a site search, Google
was used to search for Twitter accounts using keywords that included the primary/listed
company name and the word “Twitter.” If no Twitter accounts were found this way, a
search on the Twitter website was conducted using the primary/listed company name.
These additional services proved to be effective as other Twitter accounts were located.
All 500 companies on the list were researched using this process. This is the only known
attempt to examine the entire Fortune 500 list for use of the microblogging tool, Twitter.
The data was collected in October and November 2009 at the University of MA
Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.
1. Blogs in the 2009 Fortune 500
One hundred-eight (22%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2009 Fortune 500
have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the past 12 months. These include three
of the top five corporations (Wal-Mart, Chevron and General Electric). The two
remaining in the top 5, Exxon/Mobil and Conoco Philips do not have public-facing blogs
at this time.
In our 2008 study of Fortune 500 blogs, 81 companies (16%) met the criteria. At that time
the top five included General Motors who was replaced in 2009 by General Electric (both
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