Small Businesses May Not Be Using Best Practices When it Comes to Social Media - The Numbers Don’t Lie

by iCopywriter

So, you own a small business. And unless your business is housed under a rock, you’ve almost certainly heard the buzz about social media, and the ways in which it can help you do everything from reaching consumers on a personal level to getting news out in a timely manner. Maybe you even use social media - more and more small businesses are getting on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, according to a new infographic from Intuit, even those small businesses that are using social media to connect with customers may be doing so wrong.

The main issues seem to be that such businesses, while their ideas about social media are in the right place, aren’t spending enough time, money or personnel resources on launching and maintaining strong social networking campaigns. And that, according to the infographic, may be translating to a less effective overall strategy.

Need some stats on small businesses and social media? We broke down the infographic for you here:

·      26 percent employ someone - whether full time, part time or on a consulting basis - to handle their social media marketing

·      42 percent spend no money on their social networking campaigns

·      17 percent spend $100 or less

·      40 percent don’t always respond to friends’ and fans’ comments on the site(s) they use

·      16 percent don’t respond to comments at all

The top reason given for not responding to comments? Not having the time. So it seems that the majority of businesses that don’t have someone handling their social media campaign would do well to outsource to a consultant or marketing company with the time and know-how to interact with customers on all social media platforms.

Can you imagine spending just $100 on a print, TV or other, more “traditional” ad campaign? Not in a million years. But think about it - social media is a much more effective method of reaching individual consumers and interacting with them on an incredibly close, real-time basis - something other marketing methods have never managed to truly accomplish - yet most businesses are spending only a tiny fraction of their overall budgets on these campaigns.

The lessons here are simple: Social media is here to stay, and is a great way for businesses to reach their customers with an entirely new kind of immediacy. But businesses simply can’t go it alone. For a truly effective social media marketing push, it makes sense to spend a few extra dollars and find a company that will help you perfect your social networking presence. The extra resources are almost sure to pay for themselves, and more, when it comes to reaching out to the people who matter most - the customers.

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