Nearly 9 out of 10 small business owners are saying that social media has been helpful to their business. There are even more impressive stats in the same survey that seem almost low. In this article we’ll explain why social media marketingis so important.

These numbers are coming from a recent survey conducted jointly by Vocus and Duct Tape Marketing. The survey asked 400 decision makers at small and medium sized businesses about social media and it’s impact.

In the survey 29 percent said that social media “helped a great deal” and 58 percent said it “helped somewhat.” That is 87% hence our nearly 9 out of 10 figure. The thing is even though 87% percent of these people report social media making a difference in their business I think it could be higher. Based on the way these companies are using social media at the very least we could move those 58% from the “helped somewhat” category to the “helped a great deal” category.

The vast majority of businesses in this survey reported that they use social media mostly for self promotion and advertisement, and less than half of them are providing any service to their fans. This is not a winning strategy on social media. Businesses have to realize that social media is about being social and advertising is exactly the opposite of that. Handling customer service issues like complaints or bad review is a great start but it shouldn’t be all you’re focusing on either. We can’t stress this enough, good engage-able content, and lots of it.

Original article about business social media posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title New Survey Shows 87% Percent of Businesses Say Social Media Helps.