While social media remains a new and strange animal for many small and medium sized companies, they are slowly but surely adding it into their marketing plans. With this growth comes a certain amount of curiosity about what types of companies are using it, what platforms or services they use, and exactly how they utilize it to help their business. Who adopts these new tools and methods and who doesn't? What's working best?
Many surveys that ask these types of questions have been published over the past while, and some interesting trends jump out of the results. One is that enterprise scale companies and big brands such as Starbucks, General Mills, Ford, Wal-Mart and others like them appear to have jumped on social networking platforms and tools early on. Maybe it's because they have the resources or the staff to invest in it, or maybe they have people with some forward looking vision who promote it internally.
But because of that early uptake, their social media marketing is often miles ahead of those who were not early adopters.Generally speaking, small and medium businesses as a group don't seem to have yet jumped in with both feet just yet. There seems to be a general hesitation about social network based marketing. Many are not sure of its value, how it can be used, how it can be measured, and how it adds value to the bottom line.
Discover Financial Services publishes report every month that's called Small Business Watch. A recent "Poll of the Month" focused in on social media. Here's a few of the very interesting responses by the small businesses polled:
* 38% are members of online social networking communities such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or My Space
* 45% of those who belong to an online social network actively use it to promote their businesses
* 62% percent of small business owners still do not have Web sites for their businesses
62% of businesses said that they still do not have a website for their business? Because I believe so strongly that a key goal of any online marketing strategy is to encourage people to visit your website, that's a significant finding from my perspective.
Some food for thought is that when small or medium sized firms go ahead with some targeted social web marketing activity, a good percentage of them experience positive results for their business. The reported benefits often include increased generation of qualified leads, increased exposure of their business or their brand, and more traffic to their website.
It bears keeping in mind that it always takes time to develop the relationships that lead to actual business, whether online or offline. The best results are always reported by those who actually spend time and effort with their social media marketing efforts, doing some fine tuning as they go. Social media is not something to implement and then walk away from - it is not self-sustaining. The more consistently you engage the more benefits you'll realize. Companies and/or entrepreneurs who spend a minimum of 6+ hours per week on their social media marketing usually report the best business results.
I recommend some social media marketing be integrated into every company's marketing mix, but be prepared to spend some time before starting.
Social Media and Small Business