Decision makers in small businesses are much more likely to look for information about your company in social networking sites, than on your own website or blog. That's the significant conclusion you can draw from the Business.com study of how you can engage small business decision makers through social media. This is a significant piece of research of almost 3,000 companies employing from 1 to 99 people, in a broad range of industry sectors. The findings should not be ignored.

What the study found was that across all industries, engagement using social media was very high. In fact, in all industries decision makers in small business look to social networking sites for information on suppliers, rather than look on the company's own blog. Around two-thirds of business people who use social media will look at your company's profile on a social networking site, such as LinkedIn or Facebook as their primary means of finding out about you. This implies that only one in three of your potential target customers are actually bothering to go to your website in the first instance.

That's important and should not be passed by lightly. So let's repeat what the study finds. More social media users will go to a social networking site to find out about your business than will look at your own blog. So, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves a question. How much time do we invest in our own websites, compared with our presence on social media? If your website gets most of your attention, it could be time to switch.

The Business.com study also found some interesting changes in the way people prefer their information. Although there are differences between sectors, on average the preferred method of gaining information online using social media is...wait for it....webinars and podcasts. That's right; people now prefer to watch presentations online, or to listen to audio recordings than anything else. In spite of all the hype, Twitter was the least preferred method of finding information on a company.

So, what areas should you be concentrating on, in order to get your company noticed using social media? Here is the list of methods you should adopt (according to the results of the study) in descending order:

1. Webinars
2. Podcasts
3. User reviews and ratings
4. Profiles on social networking sites
5. Company blog
6. Forums
7. Q&A sites, such as Yahoo! Answers and Business.com Answers
8. Content sharing sites, such as Scribd and Issuu
9. RSS Feeds
10. Discussions on social networking sites
11. Social bookmarking, such as Digg
12. Twitter

The list varies somewhat from sector to sector - for example, in the Advertising and Marketing industry Twitter moves up the list several places, whilst in the legal sector, taking part in forums becomes second on the list. However, broadly what this study shows is the significance of social media to every business.

Having a website is, of course, essential. It gets you people who don't use social media - around 40% of people on average. But the rest of the world is now so focused on the social aspect of the internet, you can no longer afford to ignore it. In fact, this study shows it should be your number one priority.

Hands up if you are using social networking in some way in your business. Mmm...not as many of you as we thought. In fact, it's hardly any of you. In spite of all the brouhaha over Google Buzz, the fascination with Twitter and the constant media knocking of Facebook, the fact is most Internet users don't go anywhere near these things. There are 1.7bn users of the Internet worldwide; leaving aside the fact that's only a quarter of the planet, there are only 350m users of Facebook and around 80m on Twitter (most of whom don't appear to send any Tweets anyway).

The stark truth is that most people don't use social networks; so why all the fuss?

At first sight it seems that all those business people clamouring to "make money on Facebook" or to use Twitter to create millions are looking in the wrong direction. After all, more than three quarters of internet users are, effectively, on the "other side of the room". To concentrate on those social networks would, it seems, be to ignore the vast majority. But that is a potentially mistaken view.

Consider this; around 2% of people in the UK do not own a television, yet it's almost certain they've heard of EastEnders or Coronation Street. Similarly, I was once told a story - it may or may not be true - but here goes....about a businessman on a "self-development" trip to a remote Tibetan monastery. As the monk led the group of people through the hillside to their place of meditation he heard one of the group speaking in English. The monk turned to the visitor and in faltering English said: "Ah....David Beckham". Even without access to the trappings of the West, this monk had heard of a footballer. And with much of sub-Saharan Africa having almost no TV ownership, you can bet your last fiver that a crowd of kids would assemble around David Beckham if he were to stroll around in Malawi. So how come they know him?

In the world outside the internet, people and things made popular by TV extend into the rest of our cultural experience. Radio and newspapers report what goes on in "TV land". Similarly, fans of Coronation Street talk about the program down the pub with their mates, some of whom have never watched an episode. The influence of TV extends beyond that screen in the corner of your lounge.

The same is true now of social networking. What happens on Facebook or Twitter is made apparent to the vast majority of internet users through word of mouth, other media and different websites. The vast majority of people online may not be social networking users, yet they are all influenced by it. In just the same way that TV advertising has the most significant influence on people (and that's why you pay so much for it), social networking is now the prime influencer in the online world.

What this means is, if you are not using social networking and social media in your business you are not operating in the sphere of influence. Chasing after the three quarters of internet users who shun social networking is actually one of the hardest tasks you can attempt. Influencing them through social media, is so much easier. True, most internet users do not go near social networking sites; but all of them are influenced by them in some way. It's therefore essential for your business to get engaged with social networking if you wish to have influence on your marketplace. It's either that, or stump up millions for those influential TV adverts. Or perhaps simply play football like David Beckham.

Top cop Ali Dizaei is now a disgraced officer languishing in jail. His conviction for perverting the course of justice has raised the whole issue of who can we trust. If we can't trust senior police officers, who can we trust? In short, of course, there are a few police officers who are untrustworthy, but there are also a few surgeons you can't trust and a few airline pilots who are not up to much either. In other words, most of us can be trusted but in every group there are individuals who breach the rules and cannot be trusted.

The Dizaei imprisonment coincides with an interesting BBC experiment which also exposes the issue of trust. Reporter Stephen Chittenden is currently only receiving his news via places like Twitter or Facebook. He has shunned traditional media in a bid to see if it is possible to keep up-to-date with what is going on in the world. The experiment follows an article in the Huffington Post discussing the notion that we no longer need to go to newspapers, radio or TV for news because thanks to social media "if the news is that important it will find me". But, as Stephen Chittenden said in his update this morning on BBC Radio Five Live, he doesn't know if the news he gets (mostly via Twitter) is actually true. Can he trust the army of online reporters in the same way he can trust a traditional news organisation?

So, now we don't know if we can trust senior police officers and we don't know if we can trust the news snippets we get from Twitter. Is there any truth any more?

Well according to the latest annual survey of trust from the PR company, Edelman, we simply don't trust social networks for real information. According to their study, social media is on a par with advertising, which is thought to be biased. Overall - in almost every sector - trust has plummeted from the same survey done a year ago. In fact, according to this study, we even trust our friends only half as much as we did a year ago. But can you even trust this study?

It has been reported widely on several respected sites as though it were "fact". Other sites, like HubSpot, have tried to analyse the information and have come up with some good ideas as to why trust may have fallen in social media. And therein lies the truth about how we measure trust.

When you meet people in the flesh you analyse loads of information simultaneously - tone of voice, eye contact, facial expressions, appearance - and then add that to the databank of information you already have about that individual. This might include what other people have told you about them, or the stereotype you hold for such a person. You then make an assessment and you might find yourself saying "I'm not sure...there's something about him that's not quite right". The various sources of information don't combine in the right way to enable you to fully trust them.

The same is true online - except that we don't have the non-verbals to help us. So we need to use other analytical skills. That means, when we receive news via places like Twitter we may check a link or two to see where it is from; we may email people to find out what they think. What we are doing is trying to gather a set of data that helps us work out whether the material can be trusted. We analyse things more.

And if you analyse the Edelman data you find that it is based on a specific sample primed to talk about trust. The people in the study had to meet specific criteria and be relatively high earners, with high levels of education and high consumers of news. In other words, a non-representative sample. Then you take that educated, news-savvy bunch and you prime them by conducting a survey on trust. Now what results would you expect from that? The chances are they would question trust themselves, because they are likely to be analytical individuals themselves.

So, the Edelman study doesn't tell us that trust in social media is low and falling. What it tells us is that if you take a subset of people and prime them to talk about trust there is a chance they will question trust anyway. The results are unsurprising.

But do you see what I have done here? I have had to analyse the online information I have received. And that's what the BBC experiment on "social news" is likely to find; we can get all our news from Twitter and Facebook, but in order to be sure of it we will analyse it more, check it more and see what other people are saying about it. In other words we will be doing what we do "in the flesh" getting a brainload of information so we can work out what we trust. And if you don't check everything you read online - including this article - then there is a chance what you read is untrustworthy. Do you believe me?

Remember that 1970s advert for Coca-Cola, with youngsters on a hillside singing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke"? (See video below for a reminder.) OK, I'm showing my age, but yes, I remember it...! It was an iconic advert that actually lived on for many years afterwards. Advertising historians still talk about it, no doubt. Even back then, prior to all this stuff about "branding", it was an advert that stood head and shoulders above the other trash that passed for "advertising". It showed that the Coca-Cola company was prepared to be creative, forward thinking and professional in its approach to promoting its products.

So it is worthwhile sitting up and taking notice of the company's latest decision. Coca-Cola is dropping traditional websites in favour of using social networking sites to promote its brands. That's right - this giant in the world of advertising is scrapping ordinary campaign websites, instead focusing entirely on social media.

And they are not alone - the global food and household products giant, Unilever, is doing the same thing. In other words, two of the world's biggest businesses, with some of the most creative and forward-thinking people in their marketing teams, have realised that the day of the traditional website is over, kaput, nada.

For the past couple of years, with more and more people visiting social networking sites, using Twitter and so on, the days of "a website" are over. People interact and share information about products and services on Facebook, or Twitter, or similar services. Then they direct people to a single page, not a website, for further information.

In terms of size, Facebook is now the third largest "nation" in the world - with a population of over 350m its kicks the USA into fourth place; only China and India have more people than Facebook. So Coke and Unilever have realised that if they want to attract people to their products they need to go where the people are - rather than trying to get those people to visit them.

Imagine you have a product that would be really useful to the people of Uzbekistan. If you were to set up shop in Oxford Street, London, how many Uzbeks do you reckon you could sell to? A few, for sure, but as many as you would really like? And even though you may well be doing everything you can to get those people to leave their homes in Uzbekistan and travel all the way to London to your shop, the chances are most of them would stay at home.

If you set up a website these days, many people you want to attract are living in the "country" of Facebook. You, over on your website are expecting them to "leave home" and travel all the way over to you. Like the Uzbeks, they will not do it. They are quite happy where they are. If you want to attract people from the world's third biggest country you need to be IN their country. Coke and Unilever have realised that.

It signals the importance of Facebook - and other social networks - from a marketing perspective and it suggests if you are not marketing your business on Facebook you are missing out. If you want to get run over, go and stand in front of the traffic. If you want to work hard, struggle, have sleepless nights, sweat a lot due to stress, then carry on trying to build your website that intends to drag people away from where they are happiest - with their friends. The choice is yours - go where the people are, or try to attract them to you. Coca-Cola has realised that the easiest and most cost-effective method of marketing is to go where the people are - and nowadays that's in social networks.

Who is your best friend? Is it someone who you see fairly frequently or someone who you only bump into once in a blue moon? Whose opinion do you value most in your circle of friends? The person who you know well? Or the person who you have hardly any contact with? You get the picture - the people we tend to see as most friendly and most trusted are those we have the most frequent contact with.

True, you can maintain friendships "at a distance" and you can re-acquaint yourself with old friends who you haven't seen in ages as though there had been no gap at all. But mostly, the best friends we have are the ones we see regularly and when we see them the contact lasts more than just a few minutes. Yes, you might see your next door neighbours more regularly than your best friends, but how "deep" is that relationship? You see, in the offline social world we all inhabit there are two factors that are important to us - the frequency and the depth of contact.

So, if you take part in online social networks this is an important consideration. People often ask "how many blog posts should I write each month?" Or, "how many Tweets should you send?" Or, "what's the best frequency to write on someone's Facebook wall?" And all across the internet you'll find guidance telling you a "number" - such things as the "optimum number of blog posts", or that you should send a certain "number of Tweets per day". It's as though people are seeking a scientific answer; they want to be told something like "write four blog posts a week, Tweet ten times a day and write on a Facebook wall every other Saturday". But such "rules" are complete tosh. Ignore them.

After all, in the "real world" does anyone say "for best friends you should meet up every third day, for good friends you should phone every other Wednesday and for acquaintances makes sure you send a postcard from you holiday"..! "Rules" like this don't exist in real world social groups - so why are we seeking them online?

Partly it's because we don't fully perceive online social networks as truly social in the offline sense; we still see them as technology. There is another issue too; if we do conduct our online social networking activities in the same way as our offline ones it will mean we have to do much more online activity than we might be prepared for. Our subconscious is aware of this and hence we get the message that we ought to look for rules.

In the real world, we know that to get people to like us and trust us we have to have several, increasingly deep contacts. The same is true online. If you want to use social networks effectively in your business it is only going to work if you have several, repeated contacts with people in your network and - with some of the closest contacts - rather deep and lengthy online connection. In other words, in order to succeed with social media you need to do lots of it. And that puts off many business people who hope that the occasional blog, a Tweet or two and a sporadic dip into Facebook is all that is needed.

But look at it the other way. Would you be ready to trust or recommend someone who you only met a couple of times a year down the local pub? It means that if you only occasionally use social networks and social media that's how your audience perceives you - a mere acquaintance (and often sometimes it's difficult to remember exactly who you are anyway). The only way you get remembered, liked and trusted is with repeated, frequent and lengthy contact - just as it is in the "real world".

That means you need to post items in social networks frequently, regularly, often. Loads of stuff - not occasional tidbits. So instead of asking yourself things like "how many blog posts should I write" ask something such as "have I done enough for people to remember me, trust me, respect me and like me?". The chances are that the vast majority of business people using social networks are asking the first question - and that almost certainly means they are doing nowhere near enough social networking online. Rather than trying to limit and "tame" your social networking you should be doing more and more and more of it - just as you do in the real world to maintain those friendships.

Small business owners believe social media usage is a complete waste of time. That's the conclusion from a study completed by Ad-Ology, a marketing research organisation. For each question asked, over half of the 1,000 respondents said that social media was "not beneficial". And in some surprising data, the research revealed that three-quarters of small businesses have yet to use YouTube and more than two-thirds don't use LinkedIn. In other words, in spite of all the mass media coverage, social media is largely being ignored by small businesses.

The evidence, however, is very much against these Luddite businesses. Research shows that the most profitable businesses during the recession are those which have put considerable effort into social media. In fact, the businesses that are doing worst are those which are ignoring social media. Naturally, the correlation between social media use and profitability does not actually signal a cause and effect relationship. Probably, what it suggests, is that the companies engaging with social media have several common features which make them more profitable.

They are likely to be quick to change and adapt to new circumstances, willing to try new things and to experiment, and well-informed and educated on technology. Sadly, these are things which most small businesses do not share. The Ad-Ology study actually confirms this; it shows that the two reasons why small businesses are not using social media are "our customers aren't using it" and "because we don't have the time to learn about it". In other words, "the old ways we know and which we don't have to learn any more about are OK". That's what the stagecoach operators said when the railways were introduced; whatever happened to them?

Back in the days of Dick Turpin, the stagecoach operators could also have said about the railways that "our customers aren't using them". But just because your customers are not using something does not mean it is a technology that you should not learn about. This new research suggests a massive "head in sand" attitude on social media - and that spells potential disaster for small businesses.

People are inevitably social and it is therefore no wonder that social networks and other social technologies are expanding at exponential rates. Small businesses may say their customers don't use social media, but it is almost certain they will. Hence, those small businesses that are currently learning and experimenting will be ahead of the game when more people start to use social networks and experience social media.

If you haven't set any New Year Resolutions yet, may be just one of them should be to start learning about and using social media in your business. If you do that, you will be ahead of your competitors and probably have a more profitable year ahead.

 

Even people who are avid users of social networking sites prefer to be face-to-face. According to a study by the audience analysis company Crowd Science, 92% of social networkers prefer face-to-face communication. Interestingly, though, a significant slice of people prefer social networking communication to the telephone.

 

At first, this might sound odd, but actually it's rather basic. Human beings have two forms of communication - spoken and written. If you go back to our days in the caves, when our communication systems were just forming, we realised that we needed two means of communication. Speech was OK - if someone was nearby to hear you. But what if you needed to communicate to someone who wasn't actually with you? That's why cave paintings were invented; they gave information, for instance, as to where the best hunting grounds were. Written communication is ideal for people who are not actually next to us.

So, the telephone is actually a very poor communication tool. It is only any good for people we can actually, at that moment in time, talk to. Few people, when they hear "I'm out, please leave a message", actually go on to leave a voicemail. In fact, most people hang up when they realise they cannot actually speak to someone. Our brain goes "oh, there is no-one to speak to, so I need to write to them". That's why SMS text messaging is more popular on mobile phones than voice; and it explains why social networking is hugely popular because we can communicate with people who are not actually with us at that moment in time.

But, if you run a business online, you need to note the details of the Crowd Science study. Even the people who love social networking and chatting to people do so because the people they want to communicate with are not with them at that moment in time. But they would really rather be with their social networking connections face-to-face. It means your online business is bound to do better if you can incorporate a face-to-face element. Amazon, for instance, is doing very well indeed online - but they would almost certainly do better if they had some kind of face-to-face element to their business. How many times have you complained about an organisation as being "faceless"? Does your online business have a "face"?

Human beings love social contact and so it's no surprise that social networking is so popular. But, as this new research from Crowd Science shows us, we prefer real contact to distant contact. Add that real contact to your online business and you will connect with your audience in a much better way than your competition. If you stick with distant communication, well, in reality you are still rather like a caveman.