Small Business is Warming to Social Media

In Thursday’s class, it was discussed that larger businesses are more likely to use social media as a marketing and networking tool. Over the summer on co-op, I witnessed a small, local company use social media to their advantage. It proved to me that a company doesn’t need a large client base or geographical range to use social media effectively. This articled by Alex Salkever reviews a survey taken by Internet2Go of 2,000 small businesses with a focus on the presence of social media. The survey found that 45% of small business owners utilize Facebook or Twitter. Compared to 44% of small businesses that have websites, it appears that small businesses have taken to social media much faster than they have to websites.

What does this mean? Social media’s ability to be managed by companies themselves could take away advertising business from larger companies like Google, who rely on small-business advertisements and searches. Adobe could also face a loss if smaller companies are not in need of website-creating software. Salkever presents social media as removing the need for websites, and therefore does not iterate social media’s negative aspects: it is disruptive, and two-way communication can lead to negative comments or incorrect information causing the need for constant monitoring. Nor does he cover the aspects of websites that social media cannot reach such as high informational content and quality, and automated, secure ordering systems.

To see the original article, go here.