A new study reveals that small businesses are increasingly incorporating social media into their marketing strategies. In fact, usage of social media among small businesses has doubled over the last year: 24 percent of small businesses with fewer than 100 employees use social media versus 12 percent last year, according to the latest Small Business Success Index study performed by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The study found that the most common social media methods among small businesses is creating a Facebook or LinkedIn page (75 percent). Only 39 percent of small businesses have a blog, and 26 percent use Twitter to share information about their area of expertise.

The study also provided insight into why small business owners are hesitant about using social media to market their businesses. Biggest barriers include longer-than- expected marketing results and the fear that social media channels give customers an opportunity to publicly criticize their business.

If you're not aggregating your content on your company's Facebook fan page, you should be -- especially now that Google Analytics can be set up to track activity on the page. As this article from Buzzmarketing Daily notes, Facebook's default traffic analyzer, Facebook Insights, only tracks the activity of users who have become fans of your page. Google Analytics, however, tracks the actions of anyone who visits the page and provides information related to "visits, average time on site, visitor location, and more."

Check out Buzzmarketing Daily to learn more about what Google Analytics for Facebook can help you determine about the visitors to your page.

The latest issue of B-to-B tackles the topic of social media as a revenue-generating marketing channel—more specifically, can social media be a revenue-generating marketing channel?

The article features opinions from experts on both sides. It seems the jury is still out, but nothing sums up the dilemma better than this quote from Matt Ceniceros, who runs FedEx's Citizenship Blog:

“If you look at social media as a channel instead of a new frontier, it becomes more tangible. From a media relationship standpoint, the way we talk to print isn't the same way we talk to broadcast, for example. As the business world becomes more sophisticated in using social media, its special way of being addressed will become more sophisticated as well.”

We couldn't agree more.

You've heard it before, the people who don't really "get" Twitter say it's just for telling other people about what you had for lunch. But if you're a marketer, you know Twitter is (and can be) so much more than that.

Jason Falls knows this. In a recent post on Social Media Today, he breaks down the four social media marketing styles that he's observed using Twitter:

• The Conversationalist. Those who "use Twitter for their business, but seem more apt and willing to participate in the daily chitter-chatter..."
• The Conversational Marketer. The marketer on Twitter who "... has a more obvious, even stated, purpose for using Twitter."
• The Salesman. Falls says this is the marketer who pushes products more than 50 percent of the time, conversing with others even less.
• The Broadcaster. Falls initially called this type of marketer the "spammer," but notes many of them definitely have a following.

So, which marketing style do you have on Twitter?