A new measure for success in corporate social media

It seems hard to believe now, but there was a time when a lot of communications professionals were sceptical about whether social media would have any real or lasting role in corporate communications.
I know this because it is documented in emails I received in 2007, when social media was being loudly touted in the press as the next big trend that should be on every corporate communicator’s radar. For a brief time, people I knew were sending me links to opinion pieces sniffing about “so-called ‘social media’” or saying they had “one eyebrow raised” in case the whole thing turned out to be just another passing fad.
Needless to say, that isn’t what happened. Instead, a bonanza of innovation unfolded, followed, eventually, by a several years of steady respectability, during which it started to seem like the Big Five corporate social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram) had become permanent fixtures in the corporate communications firmament.
Enter TikTok with its addictive algorithm, Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X. You know the rest. The point is that things are changing to such an extent that we are almost certainly entering corporate social media’s second act, one with just as many risks and potential for experimentation as there were way back when corporate social media was just starting out. Each company will have to be vigilant and make decisions around which of the available channels – including new ones like Bluesky and Threads – are the best fit for their communications goals and stakeholder mix.
Partly inspired by this state of flux, Bowen Craggs has introduced a “Use of social media for corporate messages” metric into the Corporate Digital Communications Index. We’ve been looking at social media in our benchmarking and consultancy for almost as long as corporate social media has been around. Social media checks are deeply ingrained into every part of our methodology. But this new metric will for the first time give subscribers a distinct number they can point to as a barometer of success on social media, relative to peers.
To be clear, we see this new metric as a complement to, not a replacement for, the steady flow of engagement data that digital teams use to measure the day-to-day impact of their social media work. Think of it as an expert, common-sense annual check-in on whether the company’s corporate social media presence is cohesive, appropriate and aligned with evolving practices and follower expectations.
It will take about a year for this new metric to cascade fully through the nearly 120 companies in the Index, but we can already see that some companies are better than others at maintaining a well-rounded set of social media channels, and at using specific channels to tell the company’s story compellingly and stoke active engagement.
The metric will also serve as a monitor of evolving trends and a new source of social media best practice examples that Bowen Craggs subscribers can use to inject new thinking into their social media communications.

Verizon has embraced a bold approach to its corporate social media channels, including clever ways of threading its feeds into on verizon.com.
Here are some examples that we think are worth knowing about:
- Verizon has foregone the one-size-fits-all approach to social media channels and instead offers an array of feeds across LinkedIn, Facebook and multiple feeds on X and Instagram, each themed by topic (news, environmental progress) or audience (employees, jobseekers, customers). By definition, this approach would not work for just any company, and that’s the point. Boldness is possible.
- Social media experiments sometimes come to an end, and Verizon has modelled one way to do this with dignity and clarity by updating its now retired Verizon News Instagram feed to carry a single post noting that the service has been “sunset”. Supporting text refers followers to alternative feeds. It’s a more proactive and transparent approach than simply deleting a no-longer-used feed or leaving it to gather dust.
- Italian energy group Eni is bold on corporate transparency on eni.com, so it’s fitting that that the company would try something that most companies seem resolutely unwilling to do: acknowledge a bad news story on social media. See Eni’s posts about the Calenzano fuel depot fire on LinkedIn and X, with clear links to a page on eni.com for more details. A more open and honest approach to corporate developments is often possible, even on social media.
- Equinor’s LinkedIn feed features many news and press release links. As more and more companies pause or abandon their feeds on X, this demonstrates LinkedIn’s potential as an alternative for media outreach. Our next generation research found that many people already think of LinkedIn as a news source. For Equinor, the steady drumbeat of news on the channel also helps to build out key messages introduced and described on equinor.com, such as innovation, green energy and partnership.
The current upheavals in the social media landscape present a challenge for communicators, but this is also a period of change during which corporate social media practitioners can learn from others, try out new approaches and maybe even come up with something that’s never been done before. Our hope is that this new benchmarking metric can facilitate progress and speed up the pace of innovation.