DMS ’09: 9 Percent of SMBs Using Twitter

Live at DMS ’09, BIA/Kelsey research director Steve Marshall is presenting fresh data from the most recent round of Local Commerce Monitor (SMB survey). One nugget that came out of the data: 9 percent of SMBs claim to be using Twitter in some way to market themselves.

This number is surprisingly high, despite Twitter’s quickly growing user base (tens of millions of active users). Like a lot of survey data from advertisers, some of it is “aspirational.” There also could be some gray areas about how different businesses answer the question and how they “use” Twitter. There are lots of ways to use Twitter as an SMB, including having a personal account, all the way up to actively trolling for followers and pushing out promotions on a frequent basis. We’ve explored this trend a bit in the past.

Overall, about a third of SMBs reported using some sort of social media — everything from Yelp to business profile pages on Facebook. Also higher than expected. This deserves a much more nuanced look, which we’ll provide soon.