the business ladder

Despite over half of Britain’s small and medium scale businesses now exploiting networking sites for enterprise purposes, more than half of those questioned in a recent study believe in the effectiveness of social media.

The Forum of Private Business has conducted some research into this matter,  questioning 5,800 business owners, finding that  6% of the businesses considered the sites to be ‘useless’, with an additional 21% branding social media as ‘not useful’. Furthermore, just 7% of those asked considered social media to be ‘very useful’. They also found that merely 19% of the companies involved in the survey maintain a website, with numbers conducting business via the traditional communicative means (post, telephone, face-to-face and so on) reaching almost a fifth of those questioned.

Phil McCabe, Forum spokesman, is quoted saying: “We believe that social media does hold a great deal of potential for many SMEs. Its conversational, real-time nature makes it ideal for entrepreneurs and small, dynamic firms which often have much more relaxed attitudes towards public relations than big corporations."

Mr McCabe continued: “However, small businesses are a diverse bunch and what works for one company may well not be suitable for another, so it’s likely that our figures reflect the business owners whose firms aren’t suited to social media because of the sector or market they’re in.”

Business owners are presently able to attend a number of free breakfast networking opportunities across the country, hosted by The Forum, offering training in web awareness and internet technologies.

 

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