Trending: Female business owners lead social media poll

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Share, retweet and like this:  Female Australian business owners are using social media and online retail to further their business more so than men.

The American Express poll of 1,031 Australian business owners found 43 per cent of women use at least one type of social media for their small business compared to 37 per cent of male business owners. The poll also showed 48 per cent of women, compared to 40 per cent of men, had products available for purchase online.

Women typically are good communicators and find the social features of Facebook and Twitter appealing, said Suzi Dafnis, Australian Businesswomen Network director. Only 24 per cent of male business owners use Facebook, compared to 35 per cent of female business owners.

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Women are also apt to picking up and using new technology, said Kristy-Lee Johnston of Footprint Recruiting out of Erina on the New South Wales Central Coast.

“We’re good at multi-tasking generally,” Johnston said. “With social media, you can do more marketing with less time. It’s really easy to make connections with other people and introduce yourself much more simply. Getting to face-to-face meetings can be more tricky or time consuming.”

Johnston uses social media at least three times a day, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs on her business website.

Despite the use of social media, Australian business owners seem to be missing an outlet that could potentially be more beneficial. Google+ recently released a specific “business page” function.  Only 27 per cent of business owners surveyed had even heard of Google+.

“The benefit of a Google page over a Facebook page is that it’s Google. You’ve got the world’s biggest search engine indexing your page,” Dafnis said.

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