A study of FTSE 100 Companies and Social Media Usage
Posted on 12. Feb, 2008 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Inspired
I’ve embarked on a study of social media usage amongst FSTE 100 companies.
For those not particularly up on UK corporate speak, I will define FTSE 100 by providing Wikipedia’s comprehensive description:
The FTSE 100 Index (IPA: /ˈfʊtsiː/, footsie) is a share index of the 100 most highly capitalised companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. The index began on 3 January 1984 with a base level of 1000; the highest value reached to date is 6950.6, on 30 December 1999.
FTSE 100 companies represent about 80% of the market capitalisation of the whole London Stock Exchange. Even though the FTSE All-Share Index is more comprehensive, the FTSE 100 is by far the most widely used UK stock market indicator.
This is an introductory post covering some of the key points I have observed so far. The study aims to be a company-by-company analysis of social media adoption by FTSE 100 companies and I will be assessing usage of Social Media tools like RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts and online video on each company’s website.
The objective is to highlight best practice amongst UK companies that recognise that social media offers the most effective way to publish information instantaneously to a global audience.
I’ve only just started but some things are worth noting.
On first glance, whilst most of the companies covered have very slick and well-designed websites, only a handful go further than providing RSS feeds of their news content. Even then, more often than not these news feeds are tucked away in the ‘Media Centre’ sections of their websites.
Cadbury Schweppes has shown a remarkable awareness of the growing trend to personalise information gathering by the digitally savvy, time-poor technorati and provide RSS feeds of the latest company news right on the company homepage. They also provide an incredibly insightful graduate recruitment blog.
You can also watch an on-demand webcast of their 2007 Interim Results and download a podcast of the content.
Aviva, the world’s fifth-largest insurance group and the biggest in the UK also provides webcasts of its financial results and an impressive selection of news feeds, from corporate news to international general insurance news.
GlaxoSmithKline offers a very slick, information rich website and the obligatory news feed tucked away in its Media Centre.
It also provides some very detailed financial information that would be ideally suited to distribution using RSS feeds. Perhaps the company providing the service, Hemscott Group Limited will take note.
British Sky Broadcasting Corporation (BSkyB), the satellite communications company or Sky as it is often known has a comprehensive Editor blog but few RSS feeds on its corporate site, to my surprise.
This is quite remarkable considering it is a media company.
It looks like Sky provides an email alert service for its comprehensive news archive but would probably see much more usage of its news services if the information was delivered using RSS.
The motivation behind this study was to uncover best practice in UK corporate blogging but sadly, so far I’ve yet to come across a company with a corporate blog.
It seems like we have quite some way to go before catching with the US where many of the Fortune 500 companies now have blogs, with Coca-Cola being the latest addition.
This is not an exhaustive study by any means, I have literally started on what may prove to be quite an in depth study of the use of social media amongst some of the UK’s biggest brands.
This post was inspired by fantastic work done by Dan Greenfield in analysing corporate blogs in the US earlier this year and I hope to uncover similarly useful information as it goes on.
Like him I have deliberately focused on well known consumer brands and avoided technology companies who are well known early adopters of social media.
Some earlier research threw up some notable corporate blogs and social media initiatives in the UK.
GM Europe’s ‘Social Media News Room’ is a case in point.
The European arm of the automotive giant has recently launched a social media portal featuring GM Europe news, links to content on social media sites like YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us and a very impressive automotive blog roll! Anyone interested in finding out about GM’s range of car brands need look no further.
Avis, the car rental company’s is the first in its industry to blog in the UK.
The site is impressive in the reaction it is inspiring amongst Avis customers as is evidenced in this comment:
“I sincerely hope that this blog will highlight the lack of any replies to queries e-mailed to customer services via and resolve whatever the problem is”
It’s worth reading the rest of the post that inspired the above as it shows just how responsive a company has to become once it starts blogging.
To their credit, Avis were incredibly good at defusing any potential negative feedback with senior marketing executives contributing comments and suggestions in response to the complaint above.
This is an evolving study and I would like to gather some information that is useful for the wider UK blogging community.
So… I am throwing out the challenge to you.
What would you like covered?
Do you know any companies outside the FTSE100 that are using blogs as an effective medium for publishing company news and financial information to a global audience?
Are you planning on starting a company blog or social media project?
Leave your thoughts, comments and questions in the comments below.
Is there anything you would like analysed as part of this study? Let me know.
Image Credit: Avis company blog
Related posts:
- Introduction To Study On Social Media Usage Amongst FTSE 100 Companies
- Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 companies – Companies 6 To 10: Antofagasta to Barclays
- Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 companies – Companies 11 To 15: British American Tobacco to British Land
- Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 companies – Companies 16 To 20: BHP Billiton to Cadbury ADR
- Social Media Usage Amongst FTSE 100 Companies – Real And Imagined
Interesting stuff!
@romeo Well over due but … thank you! Let me know what you think of the study so far.
its very interesting subject thank for yo