Posted on March 12, 2013 by Webfor

The state of small business in the U.S. is in constant flux. While the economy is slowly creeping back to some semblance of health (see stats in the infographic below), there are constant threats of setbacks, whether it’s political gridlock in Washington or less predictable downswings in the economy from one quarter to the next. Through it all, small businesses must find the best ways they can compete and stay relevant.

Small businesses naturally have smaller marketing budgets, so they must find where the best and most effective places are to allocate that money. A flurry of recent research has taken a look at how small businesses approach their Internet marketing strategy, all of them revealing a strong awareness of how crucial it is to not only competing, but flourishing in their industry.

While social media marketing steals the spotlight, much of social media centers around the promotion of original content. A November 2012 study conducted by Ad-ology Research found that small businesses spend 6.9 percent of their annual marketing budget on content, slightly more than the 6.3 percent on social media marketing.

According to a survey by BusinessBolts.com, 74 percent of small businesses currently use articles for marketing their business. Blogs came in second at 64 percent. The respondents also must be happy with the results, because about 74 percent said they plan on increasing their content marketing efforts in 2013.

This is due, in part, to how cost effective content marketing marketing can be. Not to mention, it’s inherently a part of a social media marketing effort, as long as they are creating share-worthy content and doing so through their social accounts. Here are some of the benefits they’ve seen firsthand:

77 percent saw an increase in traffic to their website
71 percent saw improved rankings
70 percent saw increased awareness of their brand
59 percent saw increased sales

This is a small sampling from just two studies. The benefits of content marketing actually have an even broader reach, but even this little bit is enough to convince you how important it is not to neglect this aspect of growing your business. So where is small business today? Webfor.com