Social Media And The Small Business – Yet Again

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – SMB that thoughtlessly adopt the big business strategies of personalization and outreach in social media may or may not be doing themselves a favor.

In today’s WSJ – ‘Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media.‘ (probably behind a paywall) It’s not that they’re Luddites…

Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.

Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.

Here’s my old Slideshare deck on the topic…
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