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Small Businesses' Use of Social Media Doubles in Past Year

 

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growing The "Small Business Success Index"™ (SBSI) conducted by University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found that social media adoption doubled from 12% to 24% among small businesses in the last year.

The study surveyed 500 small business owners about their social media usage. Of those small businesses, 61% had used social media in the past year to identify and attract new customers.

The data from SBSI echoes the information from HubSpot's recent State of Inbound Marketing Report, where 45% of respondents viewed social media and blogging as a lead generation channel of growing importance. The HubSpot report also found that small businesses are spending 180% more of their budgets on blogging and social media.

 
How are small businesses using social media for marketing?

According to the SBSI study:

  • 75% created a company page on Facebook or LinkedIn  
  • 69% post status updates on Facebook or LinkedIn
  • 26% use Twitter to talk about their industry expertise
  • 39% have a blog to talk about expertise

In the State of Inbound Marketing Report, blogging was the top-used channel within social media marketing.

What does this mean for small businesses?

Social media marketing is dramatically more inexpensive than traditional marketing tools like advertising and direct mail. Most likely, adoption of online tools will continue to increase as they give small businesses leverage to aggressively compete with large businesses without emptying their wallets.

If you're still considering whether to jump in or not, no better time to get started than now! It appears that the majority of small businesses are already using social media as part of their marketing mix. Who knows, your competition may already be using social media tools ...

Does the data from the reports reflect how you allocate your time to social media? What social media channel do you use the most?

Photo Credit: Bill Rogers

 

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comments Comments

Posted by Rebecca Corliss on Tue, Mar 02, 2010 @ 10:30 AM

COMMENTS

It is clear from the last couple of blog posts that there is tremendous energy and a focus on execution for inbound marketing. Does IM continue to organically evolve or is there an exponential "step" on the horizon?

posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 11:06 AM by Doug MacFaddin

I think IM will remain organic, however, for a while it may evolve exponentially -- up until it will reach a plateau...by then we will have new waus and new tools to communicate. 
 
Therefore, as of right now, I still pay attention to both sides of marketing. We should not leave behind some values there...

posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 12:22 PM by Edith Bodnar

Cool post.Many small business owners are referring to the social sites as the "past".But in my opinion it has not reached its true potential yet.Far from it. 

posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 1:08 PM by Akos Fintor

I've just started using Social Media marketing and I'm still learning the do's and dont's. So far from what I've seen it's really going to work for me. 
 
Advertising and marketing your company is not just about getting a website online and running a $200.00 ad in the local paper. If customers can’t find your website and their friends are all talking about your competitions sales and their websites then having your site is useless. With today’s technology like FB abd Twitter there are many ways to advertise your website or your company without investing a small fortune that most small businesses can’t afford to begin with. You can begin by visiting websites just like this one and many more just like it and reading their ideas that they have on survival of Small Businesses. Then you can take what you have learned and apply it to your specific needs. There’s no sure fire way to advertise your company because every one of them have different needs what works for one may not work for the other. What one business can afford to spend the other may have to wait for a big sale or something to have the revenue to do. You have to be willing to invest your time into researching yourself what will be the best strategy for your small business. 
 
With today’s slow economy small business are hurting everywhere. I heard about a statement made from a noted Financial Adviser and he stated that most small businesses are cutting back and the first thing they cut back on is advertising. Wrong! That could prove to be a fatal mistake! Most businesses are offering bigger and better deals every day because they too are hurting and the best way to survive is to keep your name in the public eye. So therefore advertising should be one of the last items to scale down. Make sense to me.

posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 1:26 PM by Fred Barber

As a small business marketing firm DirectionWorks can't help but tout the effectiveness of Social Marketing tools like Facebook and Twitter. The investment is in time to interact with the tools. Not all of our small business clients can afford the time required to pay a professional marketing firm the hours required to truly take advantage of the benefits. We're of course glad to manage the tools but the best information comes from within - often.

posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 at 5:54 PM by Terry Gray

Akos I agree with you. Social Media is something that is here to stay. It may not be the end all marketing tool for small businesses but I think most will benefit from having an active presence in this realm. 
 
Building a tool to get small business active in this area: http://www.cluepad.com.

posted on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 12:03 PM by Matt

Comments have been closed for this article.