Local business social media use

Posted by wainscot
On March 14, 2014

Just this morning, Vertical Response published an infographic about how local businesses use social media.

The information comes from a survey of over 400 Vertical Response small business customers on their use of social media. If you own a local business this might be of interest to you.

Here are some key points:

Facebook is still the most popular social network, with 88% of respondents saying they use it. Yet even though Google+ can be a valuable tool in helping others find your business on the internet, only 30.6% of respondents said they use it- fewer than any other social network listed. You can see our thoughts on why small business should set up a Google+ page in a recent blog post here.

Just over half (55.9%) of respondents said they use a third party tool to help manage their social media accounts. If you don’t already use one, don’t let cost scare you away- there are many no-cost options available from companies like HootSuite; on the more sophisticated end there’s Hubspot, which combines multiple tools with a focus on inbound marketing (more on that below).

Today’s small business marketers realize the important of creating content like blogs and videos in their marketing: more than half have a company blog and over a third (35.2%) use YouTube. Creating content that attracts visitors to your site- “inbound marketing”- is a great way to not only increase your audience but to keep them engaged. If you want to learn how to optimize your video posts’ performance in search engines, check out our post on video SEO here.