Small companies embracing Twitter at staggering rate

You may think it's the best thing since sliced bread, or just another dreadful 'social networking' phase. Either way, a recent survey suggests a staggering 6,000 small businesses each day are falling into the arms of 'Twitter'.

Survey sponsor O2 polled over 500 small businesses and discovered that 17% of them are now using Twitter - over a quarter of them joined the service within the last month.

Somehow the mobile phone service provider estimates that 700,000 SMEs are now using the social networking site.

So, what is Twitter?

Twitter is a rapidly growing web service, in which people can post small SMS-size snippets of information about anything they like.

Via the web, or their mobile devices, a number of celebrities (most notably Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross) now use the service to provide an almost voyeuristic view into their lives.

We have set up a Bytestart Twitter address, which will contain links to updates from all of our small business sites, as well as the occasional 'comic aside' (we hope)!

Why are SMEs using Twitter?

The O2 survey results backed up some of the points we made in our article - how could Twitter help your business - nearly two thirds of those polled cited 'cost cutting' as the main benefit of using Twitter - using the service for marketing purposes, or recruit new staff.

Others cited elevating business profile and communicating with a wide audience for free as good reasons to use Twitter.

Nearly three quarters (74%) of those questioned revealed they are using Twitter to market and promote their business, whilst nearly half (42%) are 'Tweeting' to stay in touch with customers and suppliers. Over a third (34%) admit to signing up to Twitter to monitor competitor Tweets.