How has your attitude towards social media changed in the last year and a half? We’re you an early adopter, staunch opponent, or were you still trying to make up your mind? It’s good from time to time to pause, look up, and survey how the social media landscape has changed. In today’s Friday Flashback, we look at where we were with this post from November 6, 2009.
Business.com released their 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study yesterday. The study, conducted during August of this year, is the largest to date polling nearly 3,000 business professionals from the United States and Canada.
Vice President of Marketing for Business.com, Ben Hanna, Ph.D., said:
This survey was a way for us to benchmark where businesses, and business people, are finding value in social media in order to further enhance our site offerings and better serve our users.
Who is Using Social Media?
The study found that consultants and marketing communications professionals were the most active users of social media. This was particularly true with what they labeled as micro (less than 10 employees) and small (10 to 99 employees) businesses. The most technologically savvy, IT professionals, had the lowest participation rate.
Among those who are currently utilizing social media in their day-to-day jobs, 62% visit company or brand profiles on social networking sites. And 55% use these sites for research on company information.
Businesses and employees reported that they are facing a massive learning curve with social media. In fact, the average company in the survey is planning, developing, or running seven different social media initiatives. Around 71% of the companies surveyed, and 65% of the professionals staffing these initiatives, had less than two years experience with social media.
Why are Businesses Using Social Media?
Despite the huge learning curve, the study showed that businesses are banking on social media to help them with two main objectives.
First, they want to use social media to build brand awareness. With the recent success at the box office of Paranormal Activity, they seem to be on the right track. This movie was filmed on a tiny budget, and marketed exclusively through social media outlets. Paramount mainstreamed the advertising efforts recently, but only after seeing how wildly successful it was in limited theaters across the country.
Second, they want to utilize social media to build their brand reputation. As we have seen in recent presidential elections, the influence of bloggers and other social media outlets can quickly capture a news cycle.
The speed at which this information can bounce around to millions of people makes traditional forms of public relations almost obsolete. Social media serves as listening posts for companies to gather feedback, and to engage in the conversation while it is happening rather than responding on the evening news.
The largest complaint that companies reported is that they have little to no insight into how well they are performing against these objectives. Lack of standard and easily accessible reporting is to blame.
What Type of Social Media are Business Professionals Using?
It seems that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed, 69% of participants, turn to webinars and podcasts for business information. The past few years has seen a huge spike in both video and audio on social networking sites. In fact, YouTube is now the 4th highest site in the world for web traffic.
Above YouTube, at the number two spot, is Facebook. It is the dominant social network for consumer-focused companies with 83% of participants having at least one profile on Facebook compared to 45% on Twitter. Business-to-business companies, however, maintain profiles on both networks with 77% on Facebook and 73% on Twitter. Twitter is the 14th highest ranked site for web traffic in the world.
The current trend of companies restricting their employee’s access to social networking sites like these may need to be reconsidered given the value in this type of activity.
What Can Small Business Owners Learn from this Study?
Small business owners should be encouraged by the results of this study. With a little guidance and hard work, they can have just as big of a megaphone as much larger corporations. Social media is turning traditional advertising on its head.
It is no longer necessary to have a large advertising budget to be able to market your business, services, or products to millions of people around the globe. Five of the top fourteen websites in the world for internet traffic are social media networks.
The learning curve may be steep, but as a small business owner you have a very focused niche and audience to reach. You are much nimbler and can react faster than large corporations.
In this David vs. Goliath battle, small business has the edge – at least for now.
Related posts:
- 7 Questions to Ask Before You Take the Social Media Plunge
- How Much Social Media Does Your Small Business Really Need?
- Making Footprints – Marketing Mashup for Small Business & Social Media Jedi
- Who’s Online Talking About You?
- Using Your Blog to Attract Employees that Fit Your Small Business
This article written by Brad Harmon
Brad's Big Feet Marketing helps people on a limited budget enlarge their online footprint using blogging & social media. His other blog, Marketplace Christianity, examines faith's role in how we earn and spend money. He'd love to connect on Twitter and Facebook.
Brad has written 32 awesome post(s) for this site.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I think business has only just recently jumped on the social networking bandwagon. As you say, it is no longer necessary to have a big advertising budget in order to promote yourself online so it has big appeal for small business in particular.
Twitter: @Brad_Harmon
Paula,
There are a couple other surveys that have been out for a month or so that have conflicting conclusions relating to small businesses using social media. I have had a couple blog posts in mind for them, but other topics keep jumping in front of them.
It does seem clear that there are many who simply do not know how to use it effectively. They end up being that guy who shows up for your kid’s birthday party looking to generate sales prospects out of the other parents.
When used effectively, it is such an advantage for small business owners – especially right now when they can grab the stage early.
Brad
Brad, what upsets me about your blog item is the quote from the VP, who talks about wanting to determine how people are finding value in SM. I took a quick look through the study (will look further later), but what I see is pretty much what I find in almost EVERY post, and every “study” professing to talk about value. They talk about how they may measure value (p.17) but where do they talk about Return On Investment? That’s because, by and large, there isn’t ROI that justifies SM use across the board, even when you expand the definition of SM to include almost everything. Facebook, Twitter, and similar are a washout for business, except for small instances of success.
But, people such as yourself repeat conclusions that are not warranted by any data in the studies cited. I’ve used social media extensively, and, yes, I know how to use it for small business, and I know what is required. Most small business will lose because the investment for most is simply too high.
Until I see hard dollar figures that say things like: 42% of the businesses indicate that SM has resulted in increased sales of $xyz and increased profit of $ABC dollars, I will continue with the position that those leading the mania on small business use of SM are dim, ignorant, have trouble reading, or what is closer to the truth, have such a vested interest in its success, either emotional or psychological that their understanding is colored by wishful thinking.
We really need more critical thinking going on here, and maybe a touch of conscience about misleading others.
Twitter: @Brad_Harmon
Robert,
I am not a social media expert, nor do I have a vested interest in the success or failure of social media. The dominance of web traffic by social media networks, however, keeps increasing (if you take Google’s sites out then there is nothing else even close). Studies, such as this one, are the only insight we currently have on the effectiveness of social media use.
The other would be from case studies of businesses that have utilized social media effectively. If you want an example of ROI from social media, Paranormal Activity would be one success story. It would be nice to have studies showing the ROI businesses are (or aren’t) experiencing, but I have always considered ROI on marketing to be nebulous at best anyway.
I am confused on why you feel the investment in social media is so expensive. It is possible to effectively use social media with little to no investment cost at all. This is why I point out the low cost as being a huge advantage to small business owners. Where else do they even have the opportunity to compete with big companies for this large of an audience?
I do not see where I have been misleading or lacking in conscience. I am quite clear that small business owners need guidance, hard work, and face a steep learning curve to utilize social media effectively. I also point out that businesses have reported that “they have little to no insight into how well they are performing against these objectives.”
As I mentioned in my comment to Paula, there are other studies that have conflicting data when it comes to small business and social media. This study is the largest and freshest so I started this Small Business Social Media series with it.
I hope that you come back as I continue this series. Your comments are always welcome.
Brad
I agree that small business have the advantage here. From what I seen social media is more personal and would let tend to cater and give a larger voice to a small business person. Large companies may actually block or prohibit or filter use of these tools. Due to risk to the company.
Twitter: @Brad_Harmon
Thanks Jared. It seems that I inadvertently started a controversy on Twitter with Robert over the weekend with this post. He does have a very valid point that business activity should eventually lead back to measurable ROI, but his insistence that value is only measured by ROI is not something I accept (all the marketing directors that I grilled over the ROI coals will find that ironic).
I am concerned that many small business owners are diving head first into the social media pool without doing their homework. They spend many hours either on the wrong social network or using the wrong message for the platform. All those wasted hours have an opportunity cost attached to them. It’s my hope that this series of posts will help them avoid some of these mistakes.
Having said all of that, it is possible for small business owners to have that big megaphone that they did not have access to before. What remains to be seen is whether that translates into dollars, and if so, at what cost?
As a professional administrative expert offering virtual assistant services, social networking allows me to establish business relationships with potential clients. Since my services are virtual, social networking give the clients the opportunity to learn more about my business and me. This creates a sense of trust where they won’t be so hesitant in retaining my services. All it costs is my time. On the flip side, I learn valuable information from social networking to help me in my business operations.
Rita Cartwright, Owner
RJ’s Word Processing Services
http://rjswordprocessing.com
866-651-3073
Twitter: @Brad_Harmon
Rita,
Your comment reminds me of something that I haven’t really focused on before. I tend to write from the point of view of an offline small business owner who wants to have a presence online. Many of my examples are how to bring some of the same functions they do offline to the online world with lower cost and greater efficiency.
For those small business owners that only have an online presence, like yourself, social media offers the only avenue for them to network. Social media does offer an excellent platform for potential clients to learn more about you and create that sense of trust you mentioned. That’s a very good point.
Brad
Excellent article, loved the details. So many things that Social Media Sites can do for us, establishing our business brand, popularity, engaging with potential customers/clients and research on competitors. With all those things I don’t see why people would not join in, why do all these things separately when there is a place where you can do all these altogether, right? It’s a powerful thing and we should take advantage of it.
Twitter: @Brad_Harmon
Unfortunately, I had to remove the link to the actual survey, Micah. It seems to be no longer available by the people who commissioned it. I guess there have probably been a few more since then. Maybe I’ll hunt down a newer report and give an update on how things have changed since then.