Dear Edmonds (or other small town) Business Owners:

Would any of the following benefits be helpful to your business?

• increased exposure
• increased traffic on your website
• better search engine results
• new partnerships
• qualified leads
• improved sales
• reductions in marketing costs

Well why not have them all?! According to a recent study, you can – if you make the time and effort to use social media to promote your business.

This data comes from the recent 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, where a survey of more than 3,300 businesses found a significant 90 percent said that social media was important to their businesses. And in fact, small businesses (hello Edmonds!) are more likely to benefit from social media than their big business counterparts.

In a followup article from the survey, Social Media Examiner’s Phil Merson pointed out these findings:

• The self-employed and small business owners were more likely to report new partnerships, with at least 59 percent noting a benefit.
• Small businesses were twice as likely to find qualified leads than other types of businesses.
• Forty-eight percent of self-employed and small business owners saw improved sales as a direct result of their social media efforts.
• The self-employed (59 percent) and small business owners (58 percent) were more likely than others to see reductions in marketing costs when using social media marketing.

So the question is – how are you using social media to help your business grow?  Are you looking for strategies on how to maximize your use social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging? Do you need help figuring out where to start?

I’d highly recommend downloading the report to see what you can learn about making this powerful platform work for your business, and if you need more insights, please give me a call or shoot me an email at One Smart Cookie Marketing – let’s chat about how to make 2011 your best year ever!

This post was originally featured on My Edmonds News.