Do You Get Business From Social Networking?

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Back in January of 2011 I released the figures from a poll which asked users a simple question; Do you get business from social networking? The figures were interesting. The biggest category was those who would like to get business from social networking but had not some 43% of all respondents. At the beginning of this year I thought it would be the right time to see what if anything had changed. Like my 2011 survey I put it out through a number of social networking channels, including my blog, a survey on Linked In in some of the bigger groups in which I was a member, and I regularly asked for responses via Twitter and Facebook updates. I've ended up with a similar number of responses about 200 which in itself is interesting as my own social media footprint is substantially larger now than it was in 2011 when I first ran it.

What struck me was how similar the results were only now it seems its even harder to make Social Networking pay with 50% of respondents saying that "no they had not yet got any business from social networking although they would like to do so".

It seems that even the must use channels take a lot more effort and a lot more time than people realise to generate business. I recognise that the sample is small and potentially unreliable. I would argue that, if anything, my results are biased toward the social media world because that was the community into which I put the survey.

Let me have your comments.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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Do You Get Business From Social Networking - UK Poll Results

Do You Get Business From Social Networking

I have been operating in the social marketing world for over 2 years now and during that time there has been a dichotomy of opinion about the merits of social networking as a means of obtaining business. There are the well know stories from the likes of Dell, Zappo's  etc, but I wanted to see how Mr Small Business UK was fairing. So I put up a poll to find out.

I have been running this poll, aimed at UK based social networking activists to try to get an idea of how successful companies or individuals are at getting businesses using social media. My poll was posted on my blog and I was regularly referring to it via twitter and facebook. Over 3 months I got nearly 200 responses a small number I admit, but large enough to draw some conclusions. Broadly its 50/50. 50% are getting some business and 50% aren't. In order to to separate purely social users or those with no interest in business returns I separated the No's into No and No but I'd Like Too. It was this latter category that held the big surprise, 43% of people who'd like to get business from social networking are not. This left me wondering what was the reason for this, was it the fact that people hadn't been using it long enough to get results or was social networking a less productive marking strategy than has been touted.

To try to make sense of the results and to get a bigger sample I've put up a similar poll but made it more generic. That is relevant to social networking participants outside the UK. Hopeful I can have some more interesting results to report soon.

Related articles

• Social Networking To Play Bigger Role In 2011 (socialnetworkingwatch.com)
• Not getting recruited via social networking? Don't worry, you're not alone. (socialmediatoday.com)

Exigent Consulting specialises in providing Business Turnaround, Sales, Marketing and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help Business Owners improve the profit performance of their business.