More Businesses Embracing Social Media

More employers are becoming open to allowing social media use in their organizations.

In a 2007 survey from Awareness Inc, 37 percent of business allowed their employees to use social media applications during business hours. In 2008, 69 percent of businesses allow their employees to use social media for business.

Currently, 75 percent of employees use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007.

Even with this increase of acceptance, some employers still have concerns about social media. Employers who prohibit social networking at work say they worry about loss of productivity (67.7%), lack of security (45.7%) and inappropriate content posted online.

Close to half (49%) of employers said they allow members of corporate social networking sites to express themselves freely in an appropriate manner, and 28 percent monitor content with strong manual and automatic moderation tool.

More than half (63%) of organizations use social media to build their brand and 62 percent use it to improve communication and 58 percent use it to increase consumer engagement.

Last year respondents said they had the most success with blogs, communities and wikis. This year 48 percent said they had the most success with online video, followed by social networking (46%), blog (45%) and online communities (44%).

"Although the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace has reached a tipping point, organizations are still trying to identify and implement technologies that work best for their specific situations and adopt best practices to encourage use," the survey found.

"Organizations no longer need to be convinced of the potential benefits that social networking, blogging, video, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies offer."