Social networks described as “Very or Somewhat Beneficial” were Facebook (33%), LinkedIn (21%), Twitter (19%), MySpace (17%) and YouTube (15%).

Top business benefits?

• generating leads (50%)
• keeping up with the industry (45%)
• monitoring online conversation about their business or industry (44%).
• competitive intelligence (43%)
• improving customer experience (41%)
• finding vendors/suppliers (38%)
• resolving problems (33%)
• new employee recruiting (27%)
• background checks of employees and suppliers (27%).

This is great news for us, of course, because we have built our business on the notion that small businesses will be using social, digital, and measurable marketing tools more and more as a part of their standard marketing toolbox.  But it’s interesting in a much larger way.  You see, social media is fundamentally local and small.  The things that matter across social media networks are the things that matter to the people within each person’s community.  The really great stories of big companies using social media involve them acting a lot like a small business – personal response, addressing by name, not bringing up policies all the time, letting customers put photos up, acting quickly and acting apart from bureaucracy.  A small business doesn’t have to go through a training to know how to treat people genuinely.  The small business becomes the model when it comes to tending and maintaining a social media environment.

Finally, customers are wanting to do business with people, not companies, and they are gathering in places where the barriers to enter are extremely low.  This report is just one more piece of data that indicates it’s the perfect time for a small business to jump into social media for all its marketing, service, and relationship potential. Seemingly.

However, I am still left wondering if small businesses within a community outside the suburbs or city environment really think these things, and if social media is as effective as it might be with big city types. Is it just a matter of more prolific technology access and more small town folks joining in the social media movement?  Or is it a chicken and egg scenario, where businesses offering added benefits on social media networks work as the impetus to build the participation of local people? What do you think?

For a small business owner, the idea of keeping up with yet another “inbox” is daunting, much less a twitter feed, facebook profile and page, linkedin account, youtube channel or delicious account.  Now, of course, my first disclaimer is always that you don’t have to be everywhere to be effective (and often must not be everywhere to be effective) but all this aside, it is still exhasting to think about. So, I’m putting together a list of programs that can make some of it a bit easier (and for free).

SocialMention

This is one of the coolest social search engines.  You can search your company, your product, your industry, or your own name even on blogs, directories, reviews, and social media sites.  You can then filter by time of day or specific location. It even gives you a synapsis of content: positive, negative, or neutral, connected keywords, top contributors of content, and top sources.  So you can take the first step of any social media campaign: listening. Also, alerts can be set so that you can listen continuously without duplicate efforts.

Seesmic Desktop

This is my current favorite dashboard for posting to multiple accounts across Facebook and Twitter. In one place you can see any replies to multiple accounts, direct messages, as well as keep up with the news feed of folks you may be following or Facebook fans or friends.  While this doesn’t have many of the enhanced power of, say, multiple users or timed messages, it is extremely easy to setup, navigate, and participate with. (which is a big plus for folks with little time on their hands!)

TweetDeck

This dashboard is used by lots of folks smarter than me, so it must be good! I haven’t really connected with the black and yellow design, but it does allow maintenance of multiple pages on facebook, twitter, and myspace (I think there are still folks using Myspace!).  It allows a host of features like video capture, upload, and viewing; spam elimination; grouping of fans and followers by topic and some others.

MashDeck

So, I should admit that I have a huge geeky crush on Pete Cashmore of Mashable.  But it’s completely technological (mostly).  Not only is his company someone to listen to regularly and often, but they are developing a host of software products that integrate social media.  And with MashDeck, you get both – twitter management as well as newsfeed direct from the social media gods themselves. They claim it is “the ultimate Twitter app for the social media savvy.” So, if you fit in that category (or just want to one day, like me) then this is for you.

NetVibes

This guy says it’s “the new social media dashboard”. I haven’t tried it yet, but the screenshots are intriguing. It is more of a browser homepage that allows you to access multiple email accounts, social media accounts, as well as news or content in the fields that you are interested in (ie. sports, business, tech, etc).  It requires more of a commitment to setup, but may promise more time-efficiency.  I’m still a little obsessed with iGoogle as my homepage, and I like to be able to post to multiple accounts, so it’s not yet caught my fancy.

CoTweet

This is the mac-daddy of enterprise-level software.  This goes a step further than multiple accounts by allowing multiple users with various access levels to post, read, or direct message.  It offers a powerful brand-tracking element and just recently added over a dozen other social media applications that can also be managed (it was just twitter for awhile).  This is the place to go if you are a mid-size company looking to use various social media platforms by various people for various purposes (ie. marketing and customer service and CEO channel, etc)

What have you found? What works best to use your time most effectively?