1 in 5 U.S. Small Businesses Use Social Media
By Anna Johnson on February 23rd, 2010Small businesses in the United States have doubled their use of social media in the last year, with social media adoption doubling from 12 percent in December 2008 to 24 percent in December 2009.
According to the December 2009 Small Business Success Index(TM) (SBSI) sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, nearly 1 in 5 small business owners actively using social media in their business, using such tools as blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Small business owners are predominately motivated to use social media in order to identify and attract new customers (61 percent of small businesses surveyed for the study). Most have embraced social media by creating a company page on a social network (75 percent of those surveyed), while 57 percent have built a network through a site such as LinkedIn.
Small businesses have mixed expectations about social media, with 45 percent expecting it to be profitable in the next twelve months and 50 percent indicating that it takes too much time.
Some small businesses also have misgivings about social media, with 17 percent believing it gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet, and 6 percent saying that social media use has hurt the image of their business more than helped it.
