Which social media sites are small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using for business?
Facebook (as usual) leads the way, with 19 percent of SMEs favouring this platform, ahead of LinkedIn (14 percent), blogs (13 percent) and Twitter, with the latter being used by just 4 percent of these firms.
We're kicking off our upcoming June Social Media Marketing Boot Camp session with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here.
Did you know that three-quarters of small businesses (74 percent) employ nobody to manage their social media marketing?
12 percent employ somebody full-time, and 6 percent outsource to a consultant. The latter is quite the luxury for these firms, as more than four in ten (42 percent) have a social media budget of exactly zero.
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have revolutionised the marketing departments of many brands, but that doesn’t mean that these tools are applicable to all business types. Nor does it mean that social media can effortlessly convert a pig’s ear of a commercial venture into a lucrative sow’s purse. It takes work and it takes effort, but it also takes the right kind of people, and the right kind of business.
Small business owners (SBOs) have perhaps struggled more than any other to successfully implement a social media strategy into their marketing. This is particularly true if the SBO is limited to a local audience for trade. Indeed, a 2012 study has revealed that while 87 percent of SBOs agree that word-of-mouth and customer referrals are an effective marketing tactic, just 32 percent feel the same way about social media, a drop of ten full percentage points from earlier in the year.
Did you know that 73 percent of small businesses are now using social media? Furthermore, four fifths (81 percent) of these plan to further increase their social marketing efforts, and 62 percent of SMBs not currently using these channels have said that they plan to do so in the next year.
Facebook leads the way, with 82 percent of social small businesses utilising this platform, ahead of YouTube (73 percent), Twitter (47 percent) and LinkedIn (47 percent).
A new survey has revealed that the vast majority of small businesses in the UK are now actively using social media for marketing, recruitment and networking.
In their Small Business Survey 2012, PeoplePerHour.com polled 1,300 UK companies about their social networking usage, and found that 91 percent of respondents now use these channels for business purposes, up from 60 percent a year ago. Some 37 percent said that platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn were now ‘very important’ to their business, with 25 percent saying that they were ‘vital’.
Social media has quickly grown from a way for friends and family to stay connected into an integral and increasingly essential part of businesses of all sizes.
Small companies in particular can reap enormous benefits from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but what is the key to their success?
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