As a strong believer in the necessity and power of social media for small business, CEO Janine Popick wanted to know how—and how well—small businesses are using social media. So earlier this fall, her online company, Vertical Response, conducted a survey of 462 small businesses to find out how much time and money they’re actually spending on social media.
Popick wrote about the survey results in Inc. in November. Key findings are underscored in an accompanying infographic. [You can see the full infographic on the Vertical Response website.] For marketers, social media gurus, consumers and small businesses, there’s encouraging news, albeit a bit mixed. Still, small businesses seem to be making significant inroads in social media when compared to just a few years ago.
Businesses have always questioned the value of social media, especially ROI. A key takeaway from the survey is that small business CEOs do recognize the value of social media, want to harness it for their businesses and are busy figuring it out. Two-thirds of businesses surveyed say they’re spending more time on social media than they did a year ago, and social media budgets are growing faster than general marketing budgets.
In some cases, the findings distinguish between what CEOs and other employees are doing. For example, 43 percent of the businesses surveyed reported spending six or more hours a week on social media. But in looking at CEOs/proprietors/owners, the majority (63 percent) spends one to six hours, and 25 percent spend six to 10 hours a week. One-third of these want to be spending less time on social media and more time on activities that will more directly grow their businesses.
For small businesses, Facebook (nearly 90 percent) and Twitter (nearly 70 percent) reign supreme in social media. About half reported using LinkedIn, but adoption of Google+ and Pinterest has been slower. Pinterest, though, is picking up steam in ‘visual’ sectors like real estate and retailing.
How to generate and use content on social media remains problematic for small businesses because of time constraints. So many are trying to find their way in terms of efficiently gathering, organizing and pushing out relevant content. While small businesses definitely see value in sharing content (55 percent have a blog), finding and posting relevant content is the most time consuming of all their social media activities. Popick suggests RSS feeds or other tools (her company provides several) to help manage the social media/content workload.
Small businesses are turning to outside resources and seem to be more willing to pay for tools to publish and analyze social media. The survey reported that 36 percent pay for publishing/analytics, and 57.5 percent spend $26 or more a month on them.
Adding social media to already-packed schedules is a tall order for small businesses. But, they wisely recognize that social media is here to stay and are working hard to stay current and connected with their customers.
Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net