Inc. 500 CEOs Use Social Media for Business

What surprised me most about this report on large private businesses using social media was that LinkedIn wasn't the big winner here--it was Twitter:

To account for the rise in popularity of newer types of social media, this year's study also asked respondents about their interaction with sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace. Not surprisingly, the study found that many of the companies have already embraced these sites for running their business, with Twitter being the most widely used of them at 52 percent of the total respondents.

I can only guess that it is the immediacy of Twitter's usefulness that has allowed it to be so broadly used by businesses. Breaking news and the ability to interact with peers in (more or less) real time is not something that I get from LinkedIn.

Also, although the research touches upon how businesses are more broadly adopting and using social media for things like communicating with vendors and suppliers, I'm still not seeing much emphasis upon its value as an employment branding tool. It's so easy to think about using social media to buy products or services or even to think about its implications for the supply chain. Why is it so easy to forget about one of its most valuable abilities to connect people with opportunities at companies?

Inc. 500 CEOs Use Social Media for Business