A recent study by BIA/Kelsey’s shows that more small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) plan on using social media/Web 2.0 in the next 12 months. While the current usage reported in this study seems low with only 23% using social sites and blogs and 29% using ratings and reviews sites, if we were to apply these percentages to the 29.6 million SMBs in the US, that’d be around 6.8 million and 8.5 million respectively.

Participants in the study said that 32% of them expected to start using social sites and blogs and 39% of them expected to start using customer ratings and reviews within the next 12 months.

Companies in the study that were three years old or less had a much higher percentage of those using or planning to use social media while more established businesses that were 11 years or older were more hesitant.

There are many studies out there regarding business and social media and many show different percentages of use.  The biggest factors for the difference in results tend to be the people surveyed and the actual focus of the entire survey.  Surveys on social media use given to marketers will have much higher percent of those saying they use social media then a survey from a bank focused on overall costs to small businesses in general.

While you take each one with a grain of salt depending on those and other factors, the key trend among all of them is that the use of social media and content to build brands is increasing.  Whether it’s those already started doing more or those that are a little hesitant looking to start, companies’ marketing resources are moving away from traditional direct marketing to social media.

Does your company fall within this trend?  If not, please share why.

There are tons of great books on business, but to make this easy, I’m offering my top five intriguing reads. Give them a skim!

1. Purple Cow, By Seth Godin: Seth Godin’s new book, Purple Cow is about transforming your business by being remarkable.
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie: “There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything,” writes Carnegie, “and that is by making the other person want to do it.”
3. The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki: What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.
4. Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg: Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is “Hire people with a sense of humor,” and in-flight meals are never served–just sixty million bags of peanuts a year.
5. Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens: When Mark Stevens’ bestselling book, “Your Marketing Sucks,”hit the bookstores, Entrepreneurs and CEO’s across the globe called Stevens and said, “My marketing sucks – I need your help!” Why? Because the only effective marketing is marketing that SELLS!

(Photo My Favorite Bookshop by Lochaven)

In January this year, I did a post called “B2B Is Not Just The Big Guys” based on a post from Chris Brogan around B2B vs B2C.  The whole point I made in my comment on the post was that most people automatically think of huge enterprise companies when they hear “B2B” and that’s just not the case.  Granted, that’s where the big money is scored but when you look at large corporations as a percentage of all businesses out there, they are less then 1%.  That’s not a typo.

If you check out the US Office of Advocacy website, they define small firms as companies with 500 employees or less. 

Here’s some stats on small business in the US:

• In 2008, they represented 99.9 percent of the 29.6 million businesses
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll
• Have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP)

Only 18,000 of the 29.6 million businesses were large businesses.

As you can see, the vast majority of B2B is comprised of small businesses and entrepreneurs that are out there looking for products and services to help their business and we believe a majority of those professionals are touched and reached via social media just as in B2C. They don’t have an RFP process or a long buying cycle and they want to know about the quality of the solution from other customers via ratings and reviews without going through the solution provider.  They also want to be educated but not led by the solution provider.

We’d love to hear from others that cater to small businesses and entrepreneurs in B2B. Please tell us what you think.

(Photo by tedreese via Flickr – Kids at Work 2007 091)

The big kids have established brands. It’s easy for them to engage, they have a million dollar marketing budget 1000’s of employees.

ReadWriteWeb just wrote on article on The Correlation Between Social Media and Financial Success.  Many of the highly engaged brands, including Dell and Starbucks received increased annual sales by as much as 18%!

maven: an expert or connoisseur

How’s that for not having enough time Mr. Social Media!  The study based its results on the amount of engagement across many social platforms i.e, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, Youtube etc…Rating the most engaged (Starbucks) as a “Maven” and the least engaged (let’s not be rude) as a “Wallflower”.

Value Value Value: This is all great and dandy for the big players but what about the small-midsizer’s hu? We tested it out on FYIndOut and were dubbed as “Mavens”.  Try testing your own company out; it may give you an idea of where you are and what you need to do more of.  With so much information on the web, especially for small brands, it’s more important than ever to direct high valued content to a niche market. You don’t want to stretch yourself too thin.  Figure out what platforms your customers are on and engage! If you create a strategy that targets you’re customers and not the entire web, chances of success will be much higher. Take a few minutes and rank yourself:  How’d ya do?

Tweet Tip 1:5 Twitter is #1 for us.  We’ve found that it’s the best way to connect, learn and share from fellow B2B marketers and social media enthusiasts.  Our Twetiquette (Twitter etiquette) focuses on re-tweeting, listening and engaging more than promoting our own work.  Think of it as a 1:5 ratio, for every one message you tweet about yourself, re-tweet, answer, question, share five with others. Of course, don’t just do it to hit the numbers, it’s all about value!  Will your readers find this intriguing? Inspiring? Helpful?

We would love to hear tips/ideas on what other small-midsize companies are doing to engage customers using social media! Here is the study if you are interested.

(Photo from Engagement db)

Today people venture to the internet for answers to anything and everything. Unless you live under a rock, you are aware of the immense choices for filtering restaurants, travel, entertainment, news or purchases. Between Yelp, Angie’s List, Digg, Zagat, Fandango and many others, countless options for ratings and reviews allow us to make the ideal selection for our every need. Be it a channel we prefer, or a review site we trust, we are continuously aware of the time and cost savings behind an efficient means of processing information. Anyone can write a great tag line, but only a seriously satisfied patron can write a good review (or in the opposite a bad one). This is how we live our daily lives, prioritizing time, money and efficiency.

Here at FYIndOut we venture to ask the question: Why not business? “Time is money” as they say, and internet searching consumes enormous amounts of time in a business day. Search engines, in all their glory, don’t offer an effective means of finding the best business product, service, or research. Scanning the thousands of keyword related results to your search will never guarantee you’ve located the best information, and few things are worse than realizing you made a bad choice when its too late.

Certainly there are options, throw the search to the interns, outsource your search process, trust the first click, or just pray. But wouldn’t it be easier to have a platform that did the search for you? FYIndOut offers that platform.

Everyone wants more time and we would like to give you more of it. FYIndOut offers a directory of B2B services and research with peer ratings and reviews that make finding simple. Give it a try.

(Picture Moving Sidewalks by Brittany G)