Social Media for Business
VerticalResponse polled their clients to get an idea of how business owners are using Social Media and how much they are spending on Social Media. The infographic below was created by them and displays the data they gathered.
I would personally be interested in having them do this again in a year – I predict the Social Networks in use will greatly change. There current data shows that 90% are using Facebook, 70% are using Twitter, and only 4% use LinkedIn, 3% post to Google+, and 2% pin on Pinterest.
I predict Facebook will loose its Kingdom since they have taken away most of the traffic they used to provide to Page owners. Now it is pay or don’t bother – and I think when business owners see this they will not bother. This is one reason (of many) that I have moved to Google+ for most of my Business Social Networking. Facebook will likely remain king for personal use which is what it does really well.
Pinterest is to new to really be measured accurately this year. Within the next year I think business owners will start to see the value in Pinterest for driving traffic to their websites.
LinkedIn is a puzzle. I am not sure why only 4% of responders said they post to LinkedIn. It could be that people USE LinkedIn without actually posting. They might be part of a group or use the Questions and Answers part of LinkedIn. Maybe the question was phrased poorly. Maybe it is not social enough for people.
55% of Small Businesses Have a Blog
I love that statement – but I wonder how many regularly USE their blog. Having one and using one are worlds apart. I have added blogs to most of the websites I created in the past year. Only a handful of people are actually using them.
Feel free to add your thoughts about this data into the comments below.