Facebook is the most popular social media platform to promote business for small to medium enterprises (SMEs), with just over a quarter (26%) using the popular social networking website. LinkedIn and Twitter also proved popular for SMEs with 25% and 21% respectively. Video streaming site YouTube received 10% of the vote.

 

Though the adoption of social media is rapidly changing the way businesses promotes their company, over half of all SMEs (56%) never use social media to promote their own business. Interestingly, there were regional differences in social media take-up – just 39% of SMEs in the East of England never used social media for their business compared to 64% of SMEs in Northern England.

 

Our findings also reveal that the majority of SMEs (88%) do not use a blog to promote their business. However, the 11% of SMEs who use a blog endorse it with 80% agreeing that blogging is successful in terms of using it to promote their business.

 

Though Facebook is the most popular social media website, the majority of SME decision makers whose company use social media to promote its business believe LinkedIn is in actual fact, the most successful site for doing so (28%). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Twitter and Facebook closely followed with 25% and 22% respectively.

 

Amongst those SMEs who use social media, the most popular use is to promote products and services of offer (68%) and promote the business’ brand (57%). Just 21% of SMEs use social media to promote discounts, promotional and special offers.

 

YouGov’s SME Omnibus surveys 500 senior business decision makers in small to medium business enterprises on a monthly basis.