Survey: Much Business Use of Social Network Sites

Survey shows adults increasingly using social networking sites for professional purposes.

Normally I don’t quote entire articles by others, for reasons including copyright law.

But this one came to me as an emailed press release with the apparent intent that I post it here, so I feel it’s fine to do so. It was supplied by i4cp (Institute for Corporate Productivity), which does a good deal of interesting research.

The following is verbatim from i4cp, found at their site under the title “Think Online Social Networking Is Kid Stuff? Think Again.”

If you think the explosion of social networking is relegated to the high school and college crowd, you might be surprised at the results of a recent survey on online social networking.


High Percentage of Use

The survey, conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp – formerly HRI) revealed that 65% of business professionals are clicking and connecting via personal and professional social networking Web sites.

“We expected to see a number of respondents utilizing social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook for personal reasons, but we were intrigued at the high percentage of business professionals that use social networking for professional purposes,” says Jay Jamrog, i4cp’s SVP of Research.

“In an age where more and more employees work remotely and people frequently change companies, it makes sense that the business community would turn to the Web to stay connected.”

The most popular sites for professional use?

Tops in the survey by far was LinkedIn, a site aimed at the business professional, followed by Yahoo! 360 and MySpace, which is more often associated with a younger generation.

The study revealed that employees are quickly gravitating toward leveraging social networks for very traditional business uses.

Specific Purposes of Use

About half (52%) of respondents whose organizations are using social networking sites do so to keep internal staff and remote employees connected, while 47% of total respondents use the networks to connect with potential clients and to showcase their skills.

A total of 35% say they use networks to assist them in finding a job.

Internal Corporate Use

But it’s not all about connecting in the conventional sense. Networks are also being leveraged to raise the IQ of organizations. Over half (55%) of those using the networks do so to share best practices with colleagues, and 49% use them to get answers to issues they are currently facing.

This is an area that experts think could help social networking really take off inside corporations.

Sense of Community & Shared Expertise

“Companies and employees have often gravitated to trade associations and shows for one primary benefit: community,” says Jamrog.

“Social networks have opened a new dynamic in bringing that community online, and the ability to share what’s working and what isn’t in real time is invaluable to many employees today.

We expect to see this continue in earnest among corporations, and we particularly expect to see the small- to medium-size business market gravitate here so that they can augment traditionally thin staffs with expertise from larger organizations.”

Views of Non-Users

Of those respondents who do not currently utilize social networks, the top reason (37%) is simply that they don’t know what networks to use.

The majority of respondents (59%) said they would likely use social networks if they knew that such use would assist their professional development (31% say they already do), and a full 77% would welcome using them if they thought the networks could aid organizational efficiency.

The Social Network Practitioner Consensus Survey was conducted by i4cp, in conjunction with HR.com, in May 2007. A total of 323 organizations participated. For more information about this study, or to receive a full copy of the results, please contact Greg Pernula at pernula@i4cp.com or via phone at (727) 345-2226.

i4cp has its own interesting reasons for interest in this subject.

It “plans to use the assets and customer base (including big names such as Ford Motor Co., Pfizer and Verizon) of the Human Resource Institute to build a more powerful online business networking organization.” seattlepi.com: i4cp raises $6 million for business network.

“This [i4cp] is a private network where there’s no vendors, no press. So these corporations are free to share best practices, to poll each other on what is working and what is not working and have open dialogue between each other centered around these topic areas and buoyed by the research that our analysts are doing.” Seattle startup i4cp gets $6 million (quoting i4cp Chief Executive Kevin Oakes).