Where Small Business Is Marketing Online

The following list is from a survey done by MerchantCircle on where small businesses are spending marketing dollars this year:

Facebook – 70.3%
Google – 66.2%
LinkedIn – 58.2%
Google Places – 51.4%
Yahoo – 49.2%
Yahoo Local – 45%
Twitter – 39.8%
Citysearch – 39.7%
Yellowbook – 39.3%
Superpages.com – 33.3%
Bing – 33.2%
Yelp – 32.2%
Facebook Places – 32.2%
YouTube – 26.8%
YP.com – 25.6%
Ask.com – 19.9%
MySpace – 19.2%
Foursquare – 8.7%
Groupon – 6.6%
LivingSocial – 5%
Gowalla – 3.4%
Bizzy – 2.5%

Google is not surprising, but Facebook and LinkedIn being #1 and #3 is. At least to me. My guess is that entrepreneurs hear about social media and figure “Why not? It’s Free.” From my experience though, most small businesses that have these social profiles set them up and let them sit there, hoping people automatically find it and call them. I hope word gets out that you need to actively use it and engage people for the whole thing to work. Social media marketing is not like the phone book where you stick an ad in and people call.