According to the Forum of Private Business in a recent survey they conducted, small businesses do not see the value in social networking having tried their hands on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Respondents described such sites as not useful or useless to them and a surprisingly large percentage said that they do not have a website and rely entirely on offline or traditional forms of advertising and marketing in order to help promote their products or services.

Phil McCabe, spokesperson for the FPB said that while it is evident that small companies are trying the social networking phenomenon that few of them actually find any real worth in doing so.

The same research also showed that 1 in 5 businesses do not have a website and 18% said that they do not include Internet marketing or advertising in their marketing mix. In terms of usability and reliability, nearly 25% said that their Internet connection was too slow but 6% said the same of their phones and 12% of their software.

The problem for most small businesses attempting to forge their way into social networking is that it is by no means a quick fix, while those with little experience believe that once they’re set up a profile on LinkedIn or established Facebook Fan page, or even posted a couple of Tweets, they should start seeing the benefit.

Social networking can prove effective for a lot of businesses and some companies rely on sites like Facebook for more than marketing, using it a communication tool or a means of keeping existing customers coming back for more.