According to a recent survey conducted by Awareness Inc, 69 percent of businesses are allowing their employees to use social media for business.

“Increasingly employers are realizing that social media can offer great value in connecting both with people outside their company, and also internally, enhancing employee communication and collaboration,” said John Bruce, CEO of Awareness. “It is no longer about convincing organizations of the potential benefits that social networking, blogging, video, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies offer, but rather helping them to fully realize the benefits with internal and external audiences. As the report concludes, the development of best practices for companies to follow is key. Learning how to encourage participation without forcing it, how to manage communities without clamping down and discerning which technologies work best in what contexts are our main focus points and essential to the success of any enterprise social media deployment.”

The report details many interesting developments in the corporate adoption of social media over the last year, including:

• Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008 - up from 37 percent last year;
• Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent are using it to increase consumer engagement;
• 75 percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007;
• Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with 6 percent of organizations already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives;
• Similarly, external-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents said their companies were planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities;
• Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities.