According to a survey conducted by Daryl Willcox Publishing, conducted on 269 companies, it was found that one third of the SMEs promote their business through social media.
Among the total respondents, 54% used social media, among which 35% posted updates almost daily in LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, while quarter updated for few days and 17% used weekly and more than two thirds used it for less than once in a year.
Of the companies using social media, 73% used LinkedIn, 64% used Facebook and 63% used Twitter. The reasons given by respondents for finding social media successful were, networking (68%), increasing the brand awareness (61%), attracting new customers (63%), influenced by competitors (14%), just for gathering followers (12%). Of the respondents who could not reach customers through social media, cited reasons as, lack of time (35%), irregular usage by customers (31%) and 24% were unable to understand it’s functioning.
On being asked about the incentives and offers given by the SMEs to attract customers, 83% of the SMEs were not found using any such incentives. 60% of the respondents opined that social media was helpful tot heir business, 46% reported increase in brand awareness while 36% said that social media helped them in getting new customers.
It was found that most of the SMEs were still preferring traditional ways of marketing their businesses. 50% preferred email marketing, direct mailing and SEO for their websites, 34% use online press. This shows that the social media usage is still in it’s starting stage, therefore there is a need for SMEs to know about the advantages of social media.