Communicating With Small Businesses Using Facebook

I'm a bit behind on my reading (we've been swamped this quarter) and just got caught up on the Enterprise Council on Small Business (ECSB) blog.

For those not familiar with ECSB, it's a research and marketing firm that helps big companies market to small businesses and small business owners.  It used to be called Warrillow, but their name changed when they were acquired by the Corporate Executive Board several years ago.

The founder, John Warrillow, now lives with his family in Aix-en- Provence in France.  He no doubt spent some of the money he made selling his business getting a room with a view.  John is about to release a new version of his book Built to Sell, which we will review later this month.    

But I digress.

The blog post I found most interesting shows that Facebook is the preferred social media network small businesses want their suppliers to use to communicate with them. 

The chart below is from the ECSB blog post on this topic and based on a January survey. 

On which of the following social media networks would you want suppliers to actively participate in (e.g., communicating directly with you)?

 
Yet another example of the growing power of Facebook.

Comments

[Making Money From Home]

One of the best ways to communicate with your client is by using Facebook. It's definitely a good idea to consider it for your business.

[Facebook Application Developer]

It is easy to conduct through facebook

[Staci Burruel]

I see Facebook as both social network and a medium of advertisement. A lot of businesses are using Facebook because of the fact that there are a lot of users around the world using it to connect with each other. There are times when you will see people being tagged in product ad photos.

[lam pak keung]

social marketing is a great breakthrough in communication and marketing strategy and is interesting to understand more about its future development

[Julie]

That's interesting about facebook being the preferred social site for communication between vendors and suppliers. As you suggest, facebook's certainly growing in power esp for businesses. If you want to keep up with the social media side of business having a business facebook page seems to be becoming mandatory.