Social media a closed book for many Midland SMEs

MORE than half of SMEs in the West Midlands now use social media in the course of their work, a new survey has found.
 
Through its latest Referendum ballot, which was themed around electronic technology and smaller firms, the Forum of Private Business discovered that 53% of its members in the region have tried websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
 
However, of that 53%, well over half (31% of the total sample) expressed serious doubts about the value of the popular networking sites, with 21% describing the various sites as ‘not useful’ and 10% branding them ‘useless’.

Only 3% of West Midlands business owners who took part in the survey described social media as ‘very useful’ for their businesses, with 19% opting for a more muted ‘useful’ description.
 
Just under half (47%) of Forum members in the West Midlands said they either only utilised social media for personal use or did not use it at all. This means the region’s business owners are in line with their counterparts across the rest of the UK, where the Forum’s research found 48% of SME owners do not use social media for business purposes.
 
Phil McCabe, Forum spokesman, said: “Our research shows that smaller businesses in the West Midlands are very willing to try new things and experiment with social media.
 
“However, it’s clear that sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter don’t work for every firm in the region. This is probably because social media isn’t suited to every single type of business and industry sector.”
 
He said the Forum believed social media had got to be used in the right way in order to produce tangible returns for small firms and like many things, this often took a while to get right.

The survey also found that around 24% of SMEs in the West Midlands still do not have a website, while a fifth of the region’s small firms still only communicate with customers and suppliers through traditional means such as the post and telephones.

The time spent dealing with spam emails is the biggest concern for West Midlands business owners in relation to their increased reliance on technology but internet connection speeds are the biggest concern among SMEs in the West Midlands in relation to workplace systems.