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Small Businesses Vary Social Network Advertising

A new survey from payroll provider SurePayroll shows that 35% of small businesses (defined by this survey as those with between one and 10 employees) are advertising on an online social network to promote their companies. Facebook is the leading social ad platform for small-business owners, according to the SurePayroll survey, with 33% paying for ads through the social network. More than half (58%) of small-business owners said they see value in advertising on Facebook.

The potential of reaching the massive and influential user bases of these growing social platforms also seems to be adding incentive to small-business owners to set aside some advertising dollars for social media, according to the survey. Following Facebook on the list of preferred social networks to advertise on are LinkedIn (26%), Twitter (17%), Instagram (6.2%), and Pinterest (2.6%). Only 14% of small-business owners said they’re investing marketing dollars to advertise on Google pay-per-click ads.

“Social media advertising allows small businesses to spread the word about their products to a large, targeted audience at a relatively low cost,” said Andy Roe, general manager of SurePayroll. “I think there was a time when small-business owners weren’t sure if advertising on a Facebook or Twitter was worth a piece of their budget. But it seems there’s just too many potential customers engaged with social media to ignore. It’s also become harder to have your content seen organically, so you have to pay to play a little bit and a good portion of small-business owners are saying, ‘Okay, it’s worth it for us to spend the money.’”