Forty-four percent of business owners are using social media, which is up significantly over the last year, according to our American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor. Thirty-five percent of those using social media are using Facebook. Fifteen percent are using LinkedIn. Ten percent are using Twitter. Eight percent are using YouTube. And then less than five percent are using Foursquare. So what does that mean? That means that there’s a lot of people jumping onto this wave, but there is so much more opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the tools that are available to them. There’s all kinds of things to do in this whirlwind environment. The one thing I would say that’s the simplest is just to understand where your business currently is listed.
What are all the places where your business actually can be found. So we have a product called YourBuzz, which will allow you do precisely that. And that is to see what your digital presence is online and make sure it’s accurate and it also allows you to manage your reputation online. And one of the things that I highly recommend to business owners is to really go out and participate in conferences. There’s The New York Times Small Business Conference, there are many, many different opportunities. It’s really important to get out and see what’s happening in the marketplace. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but at the end of the day, you just need to find those few key nuggets that you can take back and really think about how to use to advance your business.
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