A new survey by iContact reveals that 1 in 4 small business owners hate social media, with Groupon the bete noire. Apparently 70% of SME owners hate the coupon site, which is pretty strong stuff, especially with Groupon in the midst of a stock listing.
Facebook was the platform of choice for SMEs with 76% liking to do their thing on Facebook. The big surprise for me though was LinkedIn. Whilst 63% reported that they liked the professional social network the fact that 37% therefore don't find it useful is a bit of a mystery. I mean I can understand Twitter dividing opinion (a rough 50/50 split between lovers and haters), but LinkedIn? I mean what's not to like? You have a whole host of professionals you can engage with. You have lots of groups around subjects that are likely to be of interest to your company that you can interact with. It seems a bit of a no brainer to me.
In all the talks I've done on social media in the past few years there does still appear a huge amount of misunderstanding about what social media is and how it can be used, both from individuals and companies, which is a real shame as there has never been more open access to your customers as there is now.
If you run a SME, why do you hate social media?
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Groupon is a terrible business model for businesses and there are countless horror stories about companies losing big, big money on their Groupon deals. I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.
To be fair though, that means 3/4 actually quite like it?
I guess the reason why a lot of SMEs hate Groupon is because they see they are making a loss on the services they provide on the coupon redemptions rather than seeing this outgoing as advertising expenditure item. If you offer a Groupon deal surely the name of the game is to use it to get customers at a volume you can handle and control to try your services and then convert them to repeat business and advocates. As a trackable and controllable advertising medium give me a Groupon type deal anyday compared to stuff like Yell.com or your average broadcast or print media offering. In short look at the loss you make on coupon redemptions as an avdertising expenditure item where you actually have the chance to re-sell, cross sell and upsell to customers you know have come to you as result of your advert.
Thanks for the comment Derek. So in your opinion it's less the fault of the platform, in this case Groupon, and more the fault of the marketers not understanding things properly and messing up their offer?
For instance the site linked below suggests that there is around a 1% conversion of Groupon customers into regular customers.
http://dylancollins.com/?p=297
If they could improve that ratio then I agree Groupon is a no brainer.
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Interesting piece here on how SMEs are achieving good results with social media
"A significant 61% of small businesses are landing new customers through social media activities (CrowdSPRING). Plus, more than 70% of small businesses using social media see increased traffic and more than 60% improve search rankings"
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/small-business…
You can understand it when you hear examples like this. A U.K. baker sold 102,000 cupcakes at a loss after an overly generous Groupon deal backfired. The baker ended the promotion, which offered a dozen cupcakes at 75% off, after 8,500 orders flooded in, but ultimately she lost the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars on the deal. "We … will not be doing this again," the baker said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/r…
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Groupon have received a record number of complaints
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/16/groupon-uk-told-to-c…