A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.

At first glance, this may seem significant. But a closer look shows that Fortune 100 companies are showing interest but nothing to prove that social media tools are gaining significant corporate acceptance. Here's a copy of the full report and an accompanying power point presentation.

But it is early in the game and these are results show that social media tools are making credible gains.

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The services of choice? No surprise: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blog platforms.
Twitter is number one, followed by Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs.

The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders.

The fact that the Fortune 100 do not leverage multiple tools is a sign of how consumer-based social media tools are not fully understood or leveraged for maximum benefit. It's also evident of just how much of an opportunity big companies have in using the social Web if they use it to its full extent. Companies that extend to multiple media networks still have a chance to get ahead of competitors.

The frequency of posts illustrates that companies are posting but not nearly as often as they could.

Let's take a quick look at some of the findings for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs:

Twitter

The report says that Deutsche Telekom uses Twitter for announcements while Volkswagen uses it to RT and Home Depot for customer service. Conclusion? Fortune 100 companies are still searching for the best way to use Twitter. But just posting announcements seems pretty sterile.

From the white paper:

"Leaders of the pack on the Fortune Global 100 are Sony's SonyPlayStation with well over 115,000 followers and SonyPictures who is followed by almost 50,000 people and following over 6,000 Twitterers themselves."

Burson-Marsteller also states that Fortune 100 companies are supporting multiple accounts. This is perhaps most encouraging: customer engagement is beginning to be more widespread across product groups.

Facebook

Facebook shows some of the most promise. Most of the Fortune 100 companies have tens of thousands of users.

Perhaps the strongest sing of acceptance is in the number of corporate product groups that use Facebook. Companies like Sony have multiple fan pages.

YouTube

YouTube is used mostly by U.S. companies. Entertainment, electronics and auto companies are the most likely to have YouTube channels. Viewership shows promise. Consumers want to see product videos. Connecting YouTube with Twitter, Facebook and a blog can make for a potent combination if all are updated on a regular basis.

Blogs

Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation.

"Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts."

The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?

Conclusion

Corporate America is using the social Web. It's apparent that companies have waded a bit deeper into the water but the opportunities are clear. The companies that embrace multiple mediums and keep up with a consistent volume of updates will be the big winners, no matter if they are a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 1,000 company.

Earlier today, conversation tracking site UberVu launched Compare. The service allows you type your name and a competitor's name into search boxes to produce information on your competing brand conversations on Twitter, Blogger, Friendfeed, Facebook, WordPress, HackerNews and Youtube. After all, if social media is the lead generator and customer service tool that we think it is, then it's important for us to know where we stand against our competitors.

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Being a market leader has traditionally been based on sales, page views, unique visitors, members and engagement. It's only very recently that companies have begun to look at their social media metrics in terms of the competitive landscape. Albeit, it's clear that many have forgotten why.

It's obvious why we turned to Compete, Quantcast and the less sophisticated GoogleFight to measure our competitors. We wanted to visualize our traffic victories. But with social media, what tangible benefit can startups gain from having 10,000 more Twitter followers than their closest competitor? Many would argue that its akin to counting freckles.

But if you look at what drives traffic to your site, then you'll understand that social media is where we're keeping our leads. Rather than just jockeying for traffic and search, we should also consider social media mindshare. But honestly, what could possibly be a metric for mindshare?

UberVu's Compare is not the answer to all of your problems. It's not going to build you a positive reputation or make you a market leader. Twitter, HackerNews and the slew of other sites that your users are engaging on are somewhere you can find out if you've screwed up or if your competition has screwed up. Good leaders know how to track brand sentiment and conversation to correct themselves, generate leads and fill a void when competitors are losing consumer trust.

The UberVu Compare tool is available at ubervu.com/social-media-comparison. If you've got other tools that help startups track leads or indicate a need for damage control, let us know in the comments below.

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