Small Businesses Heart Social Media

Small businesses heart social media, according to data based on a telephone survey of 500 small business owners conducted by The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business in December 2009.

The study examined the relationship between social media and small businesses, revealing that technology adoption rates in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24% when compared against a similar baseline study conducted in 2008.

That figure means roughly one in five small business owners are actively using social media in their business and increasingly investing in social media applications including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blog platforms like WordPress.

In fact, 45% of surveyed respondents even believe their social media initiatives will pay off financially in 12 months or less.

As the graphic below details, small business owners using social media are primarily engaging in social media through company pages (75%) and status updates (69%) on Facebook or LinkedIn. On the flipside however, only small percentage of respondents — just 16% — reveal using Twitter to engage with their customers.

Whether or not social media can help small businesses on the lead generation front, it is identified as the primary motivating factor for engaging in social media. That’s why 61% are still putting in the long hours and making active efforts to identify new customers using social networks (or “customer service channels”) like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Even though Twitter announced that over 10 billion tweets have been sent to date, small businesses have yet to use it as a customer service channel, but thought leaders are still expecting it to become the next predominant platform for small business owners. As Yahoo, Altavista and other players in the search engine world have discovered, you can’t rest on your laurels forever, especially in the fast-paced world of social media.

If your small business has little or no social media presence, we invite you to check out Yellow Peril Media’s social media services and to contact us for a free consultation on how to leverage social media to organically grow your enterprise.

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