SME survey

Is social media important to your business?

Social media is here to stay and is pretty much in everyone’s lives. It is quite surprising how much time people spend on social media daily – would you believe 145 minutes per day? (Source: Statista). So this survey asked the initial question about whether social media was important in business.

Of the 84 responses, not surprisingly, the vast majority (72.6%) indicated that it was important (see figure 1). Only 6% were a no – it might be interesting (if the survey wasn’t anonymous) to understand the reason. 21.4% were “other” which covered unsure/maybe/sometimes.

The next question delved into what platforms were the most popular. As you can see in figure 2, LinkedIn took the lead, followed by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I guess a more detailed question in the future might be to explore how businesses are using these platforms and what benefits they get from them. Is it just brand awareness? Or are leads being generated that result in business?

Finally, as social media activity can be very time consuming, the third question related to what tools were used. 49 people out of the 84 respondents didn’t use any tools. Again a further exploration of this could identify why that was, what they are posting manually and how often. There was no clear leader in terms of the tools used. Facebook Creator Studio and Hootsuite had 9 people using their platform; with Buffer next at 3 people sharing that position with Publer. A handful of people (5) outsource their social media to a 3rd party.

If you are using social media, whilst these platforms are free to use, you do need to be conscious of the amount of time you are spending. if you are doing it yourself; keeping an eye on the return you get for the amount of effort you put in.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Get involved

To take part in the next survey – it looks at your approach to customers – visit here: https:// forms.gle/woTkYdwVrBcE9Zwv8. The results will be shared in the next edition of this magazine.