Mediaboss Marketing

Recent research from B2B ratings and review firm, Clutch, found that many small business owners in the U.S. are not using social media, instead harking back to marketing headlines from several years ago that expressed doubt in the value of Likes or Tweets.

"They are missing out because of their own viewpoint on the topic, [made] from believing five- to six-year-old headlines and not recapturing the maturation of the space," said Joshua Dirks, CEO of Project Bionic, a Seattle-based creative marketing agency.

The report by Clutch, 'Social Media for Small Business: 2017', based on a survey of 350 small business owners across the US, reveals that one quarter (24%) do not currently use social media, with 8% saying the never expect to use it.

However, according to Instagram's latest announcement that it now has over 1 million advertisers on the platform. eMarketer forecasts Instagram will generate $3.64 billion in advertising this year.

The majority of brands it works with are small businesses. In addition to monthly advertisers, Instagram claims 8 million businesses are using its business profiles - a free feature for accounts that want to be recognized as a business on Instagram. Such business profiles are being adopted the most from companies in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and the U.K.

"In the last month, over 120 million Instagrammers visited a website, got directions, called, emailed or direct messaged to learn about a business," Instagram said in its blog post.

A key attraction of Instagram for small businesses is access to insights and statistics about their posts and followers. Instagram plans to add to its free tools for businesses over time and has just announced a new "booking tool" to be made available globally in the coming months. This will allow users to book appointments or make reservations through a business profile.

"Many small businesses don't have a website or the traffic to sustain a separate place for booking," Instagram's VP of business, James Quarles, told Forbes. "They just want to have that as part of their Instagram experience. We're just getting started in building the tools businesses would like to find customers and get people to stores."

Tags: advertising, Instagram, small business, SMB, social media

Read more:
Instagram's focus on business tools attracts SMB advertisers - BizReport