There were two contradicting reports given by e-marketer and American Express, on the usage of social media by U.S SMBs. According to e-marketer small firms are found to hold back marketing efforts through social media. While, Small Business Monitor report in OPEN Fall 2010, by American Express,says that in the past year, the application of social media for marketing strategies by small businesses have increased.
1% of small businesses were found to use social networking for marketing since last year while 39% said they did in September 2010. Among the social networking sites, Facebook was used by 27% of small firms, 9% using LinkedIn, 8% using Twitter and 5% maintaining a blog. This increase is due to the establishment of better connectivity between businesses and customers which led to increased sales. Among the firms using social media, 39% reported increased the exposure of their business, while 17% found no use of social media tools. Two out of five companies think social media is not at all applicable to their businesses. Apart from this 10% of the consumers were reported to give reviews on small firms in social networking sites and two thirds of them say they gave positive reviews.
A September survey was conducted by ITZ Belden and American Press Institute, on small businesses which are having advertising relationships with local newspapers by found that 40% of respondents used social media for marketing. Among them just 20% said it was a good source of new business, compared with 77% citing referrals from customers and 65% citing referrals from friends and family.