DUKKY

Rates of social media adoption have been climbing for small businesses, but according to the Small Business Index, only 24% of small businesses are currently using it. If you own a small business, you’ve probably already been told that your business needs to develop a presence on Facebook and Twitter, but you may not be sure why or even if it’s really that important. However, several recent studies indicate that small businesses are poised to benefit from social media, in some cases even more so than larger companies and brands.

So, if your small business is one of the 76% that hasn’t yet begun using social media, here are 5 reasons to hop on the bandwagon:

Reason #1: Connect With Existing Customers

Odds are, your existing customers are already waiting for you to connect with them on Facebook and Twitter. According to checkfacebook.com, 128.9 million Americans already have a Facebook account. Over at SocialMediaToday, Roy Wells crunched some numbers to determine that 41.6% of Americans are on Facebook.

Meanwhile, according to Edudemic, Twitter has over 110 million users and gains about 300,000 new users each day.

Reason #2: Find New Customers

Social media is also proving to be a great place to find new customers. According to social media expert Brian Solis, when it comes to finding new customers on social networks, small businesses seem to have an edge over the big guys. Solis quotes a study by Regus that found that 44% of small businesses using social media were successfully using it to gain new customers, versus 36% for medium-sized companies and 28% for large companies.

Reason #3: More Effective Direct Marketing

Integrating social sharing is also a great way to give your existing direct marketing campaigns a shot in the arm. For example, at Dukky we’ve seen time and time again how allowing your customers to share offers via social media can increase response rates for both email and direct mail campaigns. In fact, the direct mail campaign we did for a pair of local Chick-Fil-A franchises had a response rate of 279.8%! 22% of that came from the direct mail pieces; the rest was a result of social sharing.

Reason #4: Drive Word of Mouth

Used correctly, social media can be a powerful marketing tool because of how effectively it drives word of mouth. For example, a recent study by Yahoo showed that the Internet is even better at driving word of mouth than TV in some instances, and that people who use social networking sites are more likely to drive these conversations.

Stay tuned-later this week, we’ll take a look at some small businesses that have successfully used social media as part of their marketing mix!