Small Biz, Social Media Poll

Employers recently conducted and published the results of a national social networking and media poll. They discovered that about 7.7 million small businesses (26 percent) say they are likely to use social media channels to find information on workers’ compensation insurance. That is a pretty good adoption rate, given the relative newness of this capability.

Here are some other poll statistics that might be interest, along with a brief comment or two: >> 52 percent believe having a social media presence is important for a company. The real question is, “why?” Is this just because they see others doing it or are business truly beginning to understand the value that social networks can bring to their business.

>> 59 percent of small businesses with social media presence say it has provided value to their business. How do they know this to be true? At some point, we need to collectively define key measures and associated metrics that can be used to compare and contrast business results.

>> 16 percent of all polled have a business account (representing 4,752,000 based on SBA data) Interesting, but not very informative.

>> 49 percent say that their social media presence has produced advocates for their business. Producing business advocates is definitely creating value, but how are they capturing the value that advocates can bring (e.g., new revenue, lower costs of sales, etc.)?

>> 65 percent with a social media presence say they actively use it to promote their businesses. This seems to indicate they are using it as another type of disruptive marketing program. Businesses should realize that having an active socially networked community means being less disruptive and more responsive.

Check out the rest of the article for eight tips they give on using social media channels.

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Social Networking – The Third Dimension

Social media, based on emerging social networking principles and social/cultural psychology, has taken root and is becoming a more dominant part of our live. While there are no official industry statistics yet, Ben Parr has been tracking social media for some time and has noted an exponential growth in the usage of the term over that last three years.

Side Bar: If you want to follow this industry, there are many Googlable (I thought this was a real adjective, why is there a red line when I type) sites. Mashable is one of the sites I follow (Kindle and Web) for my weekly dose of vitamin “W/S”. They follow Web 2.0 and Social Media news across all industries, providing insights into technology as well as business trends.

Social media is a vertical and horizontal – it is both a “what you do” and “how you do it.” Unlike tradition verticals (first axis) like Financial and Healthcare or traditional horizontals (second axis) like SOA and Cloud computing, social media is both. System developers will build on top of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook apps) as well as build out social media capabilities (e.g., realtime analytics) – the third access.

Mashable contains many examples of this emergent third dimension. In a recent article “Facebook Platform Live Status Make Life Easier for Developers,” explored the impact on development. This tool provides an indication of the system health across many functions. Ask yourself this, “Should every system have this ability?” How often have you been frustrated with a system only to find out that it wasn’t you. Having access to this capability could make like easier and happier customers.

What about Real-time web – RT collaboration, analytics, search, Ecommerce, etc? It seems to be a necessity for many users, ask FaceBook, SAP, and Wise. Delivering realtime web content is very different, both architecturally and operationally, from delivering semi static content. So, as this trend becomes more mainstream, will you be ready/prepared to delivery it? Interesting implications to both sales and architects.

Social media is here and will most likely stay and continue to become a dominant force in our lives. A humans we want to be social, but the systems we have development in the past have been a barrier to this. Social media could be the catalytic that reorganizes not only the way we look at industries, but how we go about working in them.

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