Six in ten small businesses use social media to market their goods and services
That’s the result of the December Business Matters poll, in which 50 per cent of 99 respondents said they used social media as a matter of course, and a further 13 per cent of you said you use social media occasionally.
Significantly, some 22 per cent of you said you weren’t using social media yet, but you plan to. Just one in seven (14%) said you felt that social media marketing was a waste of time.
What the results seem to confirm is that social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, are a growing marketing resource for small businesses - and it’s small firms that have been leading the way in this type of marketing over the last year.
We also asked which social media you use and got a 62 responses. The most popular social media platform was Facebook, with 41 mentions, closely followed by Twitter (36 mentions) and LinkedIn (18 mentions). Nine of you mentioned blogging and others mentioned Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Ecademy, check.in, Bebo and Plaxo.
Among the reasons you gave for using social media were:
- "We use Facebook to demonstrate our knowledge of the medium for clients, and we use Twitter to a) build a professional profile; b) see what our clients are doing; c) see what prospective clients and competitors are doing; d) get inspiration from others in the same field; e) personal use."
- "Facebook is all about connecting to friends and their friends - 85 per cent of business is done through referrals, so this is usually a great way to communicate and I use this for business and leisure."
- "Twitter for research about our products, Facebook to promote our products."
- "Facebook and Twitter daily to push out marketing offers and brand awareness. LinkedIn occasionally when invited to by people we have contact with."
- "I use it to create credibility and a community that is receptive to my services."
As one respondent noted: "96 per cent of people born in the 1980s and 1990s belong to a social network. Social media is second nature. They are our emerging customer base. We have to connect with them in a medium they respond to."
Not everyone was so enthusiastic, though. Among the negative comments were:
- "Tried Twitter and Facebook. Ate up lots of valuable time but yielded nothing to show for it except being followed by other sales people."
- "My business is won on trust and personality, and not by ‘waffling’ over the internet."
Fair enough. Finally, one person asked for a ‘how-to’ guide to using social media for business. We’d be happy to oblige - so watch this space.
- Read our article on making the most of social media.
