SMB Tech Roll-up: How Companies Use Social Media, VMWare Targets SMBs With EMC’s Moxy

By David Roe (@druadh20) Apr 21, 2011

This week, we get a look at how SMBs are using social media in new research from the SMB Group, Intermedia introduces backup services for companies that are looking at moving to the cloud, VMware is handed Moxy services by EMC, while both Dell and Acer have launched new servers to help SMBs deal with the growth in the amount of data that even small companies are getting.

SMBs, Social Media

While everyone knows that everyone else is using social media, how they are using it in general is still not entirely clear. The SMB Group (news, site) has produced research that gives insight into SMBs and social media.

Its latest report, 2011 Small and Medium Business Impact of Social Business Study — the research for which was carried out in February 2011 — is based on the results of a 750-respondent Web based-survey of SMB social media decision makers and shows that 44% of small businesses (1 to 99 employees) and 52% of medium businesses (100 to 999 employees) are using social media in their businesses.

However, the social media tools that they use, the business functions that they use social media for, how they measure results and their satisfaction with social media varies depending on the type of business and the industry they are working in. The findings show that:

26% use social media in a "structured, strategic way" while 20% say they use it in an ad hoc, informal way.
Retail, professional services, NGOs and personal services lead the social media adoption curve, while in medium business, education, professional services and retail lead the way.
SMBs that sell to consumers (B2C) and to other SMBs use social media more than SMBs that sell to large businesses and government.

Of those, of note is that those with strategies are more than twice as likely to be happy with the results, even if the capabilities of SMBs in general are still quite basic.

The smaller businesses tend to rely on softer metrics such as anecdotal feedback, with only 12% of all SMBs using free or paid social media monitoring and measurement tools. For more on this contact the SMB Group.

SMBs Still Growing

HP (news, site) has also been working extensively with the SMB market recently, and in the UK has found that SMBs have grown on average by 6% despite economic difficulties.

HP’s survey of 1,000 SMBs, with between 1 and 50 employees shows that, compared with that of the previous six months, growth for UK SMBs has slowed slightly, but optimism is still strong, with SMBs expecting to grow by up to 13% over the next year.

Nearly half of UK SMBs (48%) are turning to social media to help grow their business and reach new audiences, with 56% per cent of sole traders recognizing its value the most.

However, although SMBs are finding it most useful for networking and advertising, the report says that many SMBs are underestimating its growth possibilities. If you want to see more on this, check out the blog post.

EMC Gives VMware Moxy

Another strong area of interest in the SMB space is cloud computing and adoption. This probably explains why EMC (news, site) has announced that it has handed over the Mozy cloud-based data protection services to VMware (news, site), which you may recall it now owns.