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 Channel Futures

Business Models


Helping Small Business Reap the Benefits of Social Media

  • Written by Dan Berthiaume
  • March 20, 2012

SMBs are increasingly realizing the potential social media holds as a means of building their brands and touching customers at more points than ever before. Unfortunately many SMBs lack the capability to capitalize on this potential. That opens the door for social media-savvy MSPs to build a social media practice.

Statistics from online business marketplace OfficeArrow reveal the significant disconnect between SMBs’ recognition of social media’s value to their brand and their action (or lack thereof) upon that value. For example, while 88 percent of SMBs say they believe social media does or will impact their business, only 63 percent have a social media footprint. Facebook is by far the most popular social media footprint among SMBs (61 percent), followed by LinkedIn (48 percent) and Twitter (37 percent).

A Failure of Action

Although OfficeArrow shows SMBs recognize the potential social media offers in areas such as knowledge sharing and customer support, 96 percent do not use any social media management. Furthermore, SMBs do not place the responsibility for social media in any clear-cut area of their businesses, with no single job title handling social media duties at any more than 18 percent of respondent companies.

MSPs Must Break on Through SMB Social Media Reluctance

Given some of these figures, it’s not surprising that 67 percent of SMBs do not plan to make additional investments in social media this year. At first glance, this widespread reluctance on the part of SMBs to invest more in social media management might suggest that MSPs serving the SMB market are better off leaving social media alone. But a closer look at some of OfficeArrow’s other findings suggests otherwise.

MSPs should take note of the almost complete absence of social media management among MSPs. Couple that with the lack of consistency in dedicated in-house social media resources, and a picture emerges of SMBs who could greatly benefit from social media, but do not have the in-house resources or expertise to make it happen.

An MSP viewing this picture should see an ideal, virtually untapped market. The concept of social media services will probably be tougher to sell to SMBs than more established concepts such as cloud or mobile services, but there is also far less competition. Considering how rapidly social media has spread throughout both the consumer and business worlds in the past five years, this untapped, underserved market will not likely remain untapped or underserved for too long. Will you be a leader or a follower?

Tags: Agents Cloud Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Business Models Technologies

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2 comments

  1. Avatar Stuart Crawford March 21, 2012 @ 11:30 am
    Reply

    Hi Dan, great article, but I struggle with this. I see social media as the perfect tool to enhance relationships and build vibrant networks. I struggle with the effectiveness of spray and pray marketing tool. Sure it is nice to share information and engage folks in conversation, however in reality the only people who use Facebook, Twitter and other tools are other social media professionals trying to spread FUD on social media effectiveness. Now, I agree some industry social media simple works. Any B2C is a great example, B2B is where the struggle is.

    I recommend as a MSP Marketing Professional that MSPs look at more traditional approaches to marketing but not to abandon social media but to find balance.

    There are so many more effective marketing strategies for MSPs to reach SMBs. Knowing this, executing on it and then teaching clients is where they can excel. However, many of us still look at helping clients with antivirus and RMM when we have a whole new opportunity out there.

    Cheers

    Stuart Crawford
    Ulistic Inc.

  2. Avatar Joe Panettieri March 21, 2012 @ 10:45 pm
    Reply

    Stuart,

    Your “spray and pray” term caught my eye. So true.

    I think with social media, you need to build the face-to-face or personal relationship first and THEN build the social media relationship. There has to be affinity for a brand or person for the social media engagement to really work. And that affinity can’t happen simply through the “spray and pray” approach, as you pointed out.
    -jp

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