The Shift in Small Business Behavior: 90 Percent Networking Online, According to New Manta Survey

Poll Also Finds Small Businesses Gain at Least a Quarter of New Customers Online
COLUMBUS, Ohio—September 12, 2012— Small business owners are putting an increased emphasis on establishing and promoting themselves online to network and increase their customer base. An overwhelming majority (90 percent) dedicates time to networking online and 74 percent find networking online just as, if not more, valuable than networking in person, according to a new survey by Manta, the largest online community dedicated entirely to small business.

Nearly 50 percent of small business owners surveyed say the most valuable benefit of networking online
is gaining and targeting prospective customers. Moreover, 78 percent say they gained at least a quarter of their new customers through online or social media channels this year."Small businesses understand they need to go where their audience is. Participating, networking and being found online is extremely important today in growing their business, so it's not surprising that they are embracing the channel", said Pamela Springer, CEO of Manta. "We're empowering members of the Manta community to create a comprehensive showcase for their company, products and services, and member profile all in one place. And, since more than 36 million people come to Manta each month searching for companies and their related products and services, these searches will now become even more valuable and more profitable for our members."
"As 97 percent of consumers use the Internet
to research products or services in their local area, and those searches regularly include company name, product or service, or business owner, it is critical small businesses build awareness of themselves and their company online. Manta is providing them with the ability to create and house all of this content about their company in one place, which enables them to be found in all the ways customers search for businesses," said Jed Williams, BIA/Kelsey Program Director.However, the large amount of online and social media channels available can be overwhelming for today's small business owner to navigate and use successfully. 58 percent of small businesses surveyed say they struggle to find value in using Facebook to promote their business or don't have a page at all. Pinterest and Groupon, channels considered to be popular with consumers, turned out to be the most unfruitful online channels for small businesses, receiving a 1 percent and less than 1 percent response, respectively. On the flip side, nearly 25 percent of small businesses surveyed say their company website drives the most business for them, which is a simple place for busy small business owners to start driving awareness online.
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Outsource Your Social Media to the Professionals

Outsource Your Social Media to the Professionals
 By Chris Abraham
I really believe it’s bad advice to recommend that companies fire their social media consultants, experts and agencies only to bring everything in house.

While “everyone” is on Facebook, social media is no longer a land of tinkerers; it’s a land of consumers. If you fill a room of potential brand ambassadors you harvest from your own ranks, I guarantee that only 1% to 10% of those people are active participants, and the rest are passive folks who are mostly lurkers. And when people bring up Zappos as the corporate exemplar, I always remind them that Zappos is exceptional and that’s why they’re the only company anyone can think of who does it as well internally. Plus, Zappos is a dyed-in-the-wool customer-service-centric company with an aggressive, visionary founder — someone who has completely rebuilt itself to over-serve its communities. Kudos, but seriously a truly exceptional example.

Only the largest companies have in-house counsel — their own corporate lawyers. Very few small or medium-sized companies maintain their own in-house accountants, designers, publicists, reputation and crisis managers, or marketers — some don’t even have their own dedicated sales teams.

And this is becoming more and more the reality of modern business — and it started in the ’90s. Why incur internal staff bloating when you can keep your staff limited to core expertise and services in focus, outsourcing everything else to professional service firms — vendors? Specialist vendors, like doctors or lawyers or management consultants, are generally staffed by people who are not only trained and experienced but also have the benefit of being able to load-balance and mind-share across the experience of multiple clients.

The best vendors, like the best docs and lawyers, keep rigorously up to date in the state of the art with a single-minded incentive to keep up and even lead the way. Personally, I have over 15 years of experience in consulting, and the only way a consultant ever gets a job — and keeps it — is by being just a little smarter, more curious, quicker, and more confident than the client — and since this is rarely completely true, most consultants worth their salt work really hard and spend many hours being and staying a top expert in the field.

Why Zappos is the unicorn of social media success stories....................


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