It’s true. Do you? Reading this blog would apparently qualify based on Inc.com’s article To Gain Competitive Edge, Companies Turn to Blogs, Video, and Social Networks.
A study by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research found that 51 percent of Inc. 500 companies are monitoring social media, and they are doing so by various methods, including reading RSS feeds, looking at Web statistics, tracking video downloads, and watching online competitive activity.
Interesting. The article isn’t overly descriptive of the methods, but the blog piece is certainly worth noting.
“Inc. 500 companies are saying that not only is it important for us to communicate in an outbound way, but it’s also important to listen to what is going on out there and what other companies are saying,” Mattson said. One of the popular ways to keep up with competitors, according to Mattson, is to read other companies’ blogs. “Blogs and their content have become a real market force, and provide the ability for word of mouth to spread and be around for a very long time,” Mattson added.
That’s an approach we subscribe to also.