Latest social media usage stats for small businesses

Increasing use of Twitter and Facebook but other opportunities missed

The latest statistics on social media usage by small businesses suggest that over 90% are using Facebook, 70% are on Twitter but with much smaller, single digit percentages using other platforms like Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. This survey was actually for small businesses in America but with UK typically around 8 months behind, the trend is still relevant and predicts where we will be mid way through 2013.

What is even more surprising is the time that small businesses are allocating to their online social media marketing….

66% of small businesses spending more time on social media this year versus last

More than half of all businesses are spending over an hour on social media each week and a staggering figure of just over 40% spend 6 hours or more promoting their business via tweets, posts, shares and blogs. This is incredible growth given that just two years ago many small businesses had never heard of Twitter and used Facebook purely for social activity.

More than half of the businesses surveyed were also regularly using a company blog to bring fresh content to their domains and to announce news and updates on products and services.

However, a much smaller percentage had started to use other platforms like Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest suggesting that they were focusing on what they know but leaving other excellent marketing sources untapped. We think this is merely the start of the curve – as the benefits of the other platforms become clear, particularly the networking opportunities offered by LinkedIn and the SEO benefits of Google+, then adoption rates will increase significantly.

What does this mean for dental practices?

A dental practice is a small business in its own right and the benefits are the same – blogging and use of social media are now the norm for web savvy marketers and their use will only continue to grow, not just with Twitter and Facebook but with other platforms like Google+ and Pinterest as their benefits become clear. As a minimum, we now recommend a blog, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ as key components of a comprehensive dental web marketing strategy. A LinkedIn account is also valuable as is the use of platforms like Pinterest to broaden your content marketing reach. More on this in future blogs.

How much time will this take?

Like everything, the more effort put in, the greater the benefits – underpinned of course by a clear strategy and appropriate allocation of resources. There are also a number of key tips and tools that can be used to automate some of the process and make it as efficient as possible – certainly a few hours per week is sufficient to gain momentum.

At Dental Media we offer tiered support for your social media campaigns, including training, remote support and mentoring through to fully managed campaigns if you simply don’t have the resources to allocate.

For more information without obligation, please call us on 01332 672548.