78% of small businesses will invest more in Social Media Marketing

78% of small business owners said that they plan to spend more of their marketing budget on actions and marketing strategies through social media during this year, compared to what they invested during last year 2010.

Facebook is consolidated as the social network and the favorite tool by an overwhelming majority, since 68% of them indicated that this was the most used platform for business.

Other interesting data that we can find in the study “The Small Business Social Media Survey” are:

  • 69% of small business owners said they currently use social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs) in their companies. Of those who do not, 41% said they will start it in the next three months.
  • 59% said that social media has fully or partially fulfilled their expectations, and yet 77.5% plan to invest more money in them. This suggests that they are given the value they deserve, but they still try to dominate social media.
  • 43% of small business owners indicated that they allocate between 0 and 10% of their marketing budgets for social media. In addition, 36.5% said they update their content on social media only once a week or less.

Social media allows small businesses to connect with their customers immediately and more personally than with traditional marketing, “Webs CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada said in a statement. “Through the use of social tools, owners of small businesses can have a professional presence that attracts and retains customers.”

Another news in this case, related to Facebook, is that it has already begun to apply the “Social Yeah” function, through which users can recommend pages to their friends while they are browsing Facebook, something that we were already lacking in the great social network. Its function, apparently, will be very simple since clicking on the recommend button will open a text box where we can leave a comment before sending.