A new survey from the O2 Ideas Room has revealed that the amount of Irish small and medium sized businesses that operate a blog remains quite low at 9%, while only one in ten has a Twitter account. The survey did however indicate that a decent proportion of SMEs are adopting social media marketing techniques of one form or another.

Irish SMEs don’t have time to blog or tweet apparently.

The O2 survey finds that almost a quarter (23%) of senior SME executives are now members of a ‘business or professional’ social media website; with the most popular site for senior execs being LinkedIn (where 18% of them have an account). In addition, 15% of Irish SMEs have their business on Facebook, rising to 20% for technology related companies. 

The study, which was conducted for the O2 Ideas Room by Behaviour & Attitudes, finds that almost one in ten businesses (9%) has a blog, up from 5% last year. While 11% of technology companies blog, and 13% of senior SME executives contribute to or respond to blogs. B&A surveyed over 300 owners or director level executives in organisations employing between 1-250 people nationwide.

“We already know from discussion topics on the O2 Ideas Room blog that SMEs are becoming more interested in social media, so it’s great to be able to verify that through this research,” commented Jonnie Cahill, head of communications and sponsorship, Telefónica O2 Ireland. “The findings suggest that social media is increasingly becoming part of how SMEs are marketing themselves.”

The O2 Ideas Room was set up by O2 in 2009 to provide a platform “for businesses to talk to each other online and to access expert advice on a range of different areas from finance to marketing”.

Any of you surprised at such a low level of business blogs and Twitter accounts?