47% prefer it Online

Vodaphone has recently polled 1,100 British business and found that almost half (47%) of the entrepreneurs in their early 20s preferred to network online. This should be a wakeup call for many small businesses, you need a website and an email address. More importantly you need to make sure that the emails are read and answered promptly. These young entrepreneurs are your future customers and it’s likely they are representative of the wider population too.

The poll claims that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are unlikely to deliver success in terms of business, despite their soaring popularity. While I’d agree it’s hardly news after all neither was designed as to facilitate business, they are after all social networks.

Overall (67%) of those polled said they preferred to do business face to face. The reality however I suspect is different, while I prefer to do business face to face, more and more of my introductions and initial discussions are done online with only the final meetings conducted face to face.

So where do you stand, are you and online or offline business person? Have you used social networks for business?

I am, as usual, in the average 47%

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