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’.

Only 12 percent of the SMBs said that social media was ‘not important’.

Facebook is the most used channel, with 71.1 percent of respondents using it for business, ahead of LinkedIn (65.3 percent) and Twitter (59.5 percent).

(Why 2.4 percent of SMBs are using FriendsReunited for business is anyone’s guess.)

When entrepreneurs were pressed on why they are using social networking sites for business, an equal 57.4 percent said they were doing so to find new clients or meet like-minded people, 54.2 percent to promote themselves, 53.8 percent to share ideas, and 33.4 percent to find people they may want to hire.

The full report is available to read here (PDF).

(Source: PeoplePerHour.com. Top image credit: williammpark via Shutterstock.)