Does Social Media Drive Word of Mouth? SMB’s Say No

eMarketer highlights an interesting study from Hiscox – which shows low usage of social media by small businesses, and even less importance ascribed to the area. On the other hand, most viewed word-of-mouth as critical to their success.

The article says:

50% of respondents said the marketing tool they could not do without was word-of-mouth. Just 4% said the same about social media, even though the goal of most social media marketing efforts is to create word-of-mouth.

I think this is an interesting dichotomy – most experts seem to think social media can be used to create word-of-mouth, yet this is not the first study to show that small business owners clearly do not feel the same way. Do you think these are really separate channels? Or are the SMB’s missing out?

Read the full article at: Are Small Businesses Apathetic About Social Media? – eMarketer.

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