{"id":2115,"date":"2011-05-19T07:00:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T15:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2115"},"modified":"2011-05-19T07:00:27","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T15:00:27","slug":"social-media-europes-smbs-are-enthusiastic-adopters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/social-media-europes-smbs-are-enthusiastic-adopters\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: Europe&#039;s SMBs are Enthusiastic Adopters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Social Media has become widely accepted by many Small and Medium sized Businesses in Europe. \u00a0In a <a title=\"Survey by Really Simple Systems\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reallysimplesystems.com\/release.asp?id=24\" target=\"_blank\">survey<\/a> taken by a UK-based CRM hosting company found that as many as 62 percent say that they are using Social Media on a daily basis in communicating internally and externally with customers. \u00a0Social Media has become an important tool in interacting with existing customers and in generating new leads.<\/p>\n<p>Of the Social Media tools used, not too surprisingly, LinkedIn was cited as the most frequently used.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>83 percent use <strong>LinkedIn<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>72 percent use <strong>FaceBook <\/strong>for these businesses<\/li>\n<li>65 percent use <strong>Twitter<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>45 percent maintain active <strong>blogs<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>3.5 percent are using other types of social media like <strong>YouTube<\/strong>, <strong>Yammer<\/strong>, <strong>Xing<\/strong>, <strong>Quora <\/strong>and <strong>FourSquare<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>John Paterson, CEO of Really Simple Systems, said, &#8220;We all know that enterprise companies are rapidly adopting social media as a means of communicating with existing customers and prospects, but I was surprised to see that adoption among small businesses was so advanced. Our survey shows that 80 percent of respondents agree that cloud systems require less internal IT-support. \u00a0And with 63 percent stating that Software as a Service solutions are made more attractive by the current financial climate, cloud solutions continue to be a major way for companies to dramatically reduce IT overheads, removing the burden of system maintenance for small organizations who would rather allocate that resource to developing the business.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"lightsocial_container\"><div class=\"lightsocial_element\"><a class=\"lightsocial_a\" href=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fformtek.com%2Fblog%2Fsocial-media-europes-smbs-are-enthusiastic-adopters%2F&amp;title=\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lightsocial_img\" src=\"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/light-social\/digg.png\" alt=\"Digg This\" title=\"Digg This\" \/><\/a><\/div><div class=\"lightsocial_element\"><a class=\"lightsocial_a\" 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