Facebook Is for Friends, Blogging Is for Benjamins

Author:

Jeanne Hopkins

Source:

The economic challenges of 2009 had more small businesses looking for less-expensive marketing tactics, especially social media channels. In fact, social media usage among small businesses doubled from 12% in 2008 to 24% in 2009, according to "The State of Small Business Report" from Network Solutions Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
 
The method of choice for 75% of the small businesses surveyed was a company page on Facebook or LinkedIn, followed closely by posting status updates and articles of interests to sites like Facebook or LinkedIn (69%).  Additionally, 57% use social network sites to build their networks, and 54% use them to monitor feedback about their organizations.
 
Those large numbers make sense, as an ever-increasing number of people use such social network sites. Facebook says it has more than 400 million active users, with 50% of active users logging on every day; LinkedIn has more than 50 million members worldwide; and Twitter has about 75 million members. You want to go where the people are, and people are on social networks.
 
Where small businesses are missing out, however, is in creating their own ...