For small businesses, social media is becoming an indispensible marketing avenue and large cities are taking advantage of it. Based on small business intelligence firm Radius’ Social Small Business Report, Chicago ranked #6 on the list of social media-savvy small business cities.
Leading the charge were West Coast cities such as San Francisco (#1), Los Angeles (#2), Seattle (#4) and San Diego (#5). The only East Coast cities to make the list were Washington, D.C. (#3) and New York City (#7). Dallas, Phoenix and Tampa (#8, #9 and #10) rounded it out.
The report tracks the top 85 U.S. cities, which are scored on the basis of social media and daily deal activity and ranked on the Radius Social Index. The analysis includes data from 15 million small businesses and draws information from Facebook and Twitter activity, Foursquare check-ins and Yelp reviews.
According to a press release, other notable findings include:
- Grand Rapids, MI (29%) and Oklahoma, OK (28%) have the highest percentage of SMBs with Facebook pages.
- Metropolitan cities that serve as home to major daily deal companies such as Living Social (Washington, DC - .5%) and Groupon (Chicago, IL - .4%) have the highest percentage of SMBs that have done at least one daily deal. However, both cities are less than 1 percent.
(Infographic via Mashable)
What do you think this says about Chicago’s approach to small business?
