While it’s hard to say “I am surprised”, a survey released in the United States revealed that small businesses are spending more money and time on social media.
Vertical Response, a provider of self-service marketing solutions, says they inquired about how much time small businesses spend on “social media activities, including finding and sharing content on popular social networks and blogging, and what tasks take the most time.”
Of the 462 small businesses surveyed, 66 percent said they spend more time on social media now than previous years. In addition, 43 percent said they spend “six or more hours per week on social media activities for their business.”
“Our survey confirms that small businesses are understanding the value of social media,” said Janine Popick, chief executive officer and founder of VerticalResponse. “They’re spending more time doing it, and investing more money into it at a faster rate. But the extra work will likely lead to time management issues, especially for the small business owner who’s handling social media on top of all the other responsibilities of running a company.”
This tells us small business owners are starting to understand the value of social media but hiring an expert is essential as a small business can’t possibly be all , do all and succeed.
Keeping Popick’s last statement in mind, of the CEOs and owners surveyed, nearly 33 percent said “they’d rather spend less time on social media.” According to the release, the 33 percent would rather focus their time on expanding the business.
Although their concerns seem valid, it seems kind of silly to not want to spend more time on social media related activities. After all, with an estimated 1.2 billion Facebook users, more than 200 million on LinkedIn worldwide and an average of 200 million tweets per day, how can you not say social media is important?
Based on these statistics, it seems as if social media is essentially taking over all other marketing techniques.
Business do however need to understand that social media is only one corner of the very large digital marketing puzzle.
What the survey did not discuss was the impact a Company’s website and other online attributes have on its Social Media presence.
The digital landscape is a very rapidly growing vertical and business owners need to hold on, use the tools and hire a professional to take full advantage on what digital marketing can do for there business.
