According to a November report from Constant Contact, small businesses are finding that using social media is getting easier, is less time consuming and is working well with their customer base.

You can see in the chart below that in just 6 months, small businesses have embraced social media use  much more. They are finding the low cost and ease of use well worth it.

Here are some statistics from their survey:

• 83% of respondents use social media because of its low cost
• 67% of respondents use social media for its ease of use
• 45% of respondents use social media because it doesn’t take up a lot of time
• 51% of respondents use social media because it works for their customers

Out of all the social networks, Facebook came out on top as the most popular for small business to use. Twitter, LinkedIn and Video Sharing followed.

How is engagement between small businesses and their customers? Sixty percent of participants said they respond to all comments on their social media platforms, whether the comments are good or bad.

Did anything surprise you about this data? You can see more of their key findings here.

About the Survey

This Constant Contact-sponsored survey was administered during October 2011 to small business owners and employees. Results include responses from 1,972 organizations across a range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries. Ninety-five percent are Constant Contact customers, 87% are located in the US, and 81% have 25 or less employees