Americans Trust Small Businesses–But Government Hasn’t Caught On

There’s some interesting new research from the PEW Research Center.  People view small businesses with more trust than even churches, colleges, labor unions and other groups.  The study also showed that Americans say small businesses don’t get enough attention from the federal government. “At a time when a lot of institutions are viewed negatively, small business is viewed very positively. What’s really interesting is that large corporations are viewed almost as negatively as Wall Street. The contrast between large corporations and small business is enormous,” said Pew Associate Director Carroll Dougherty.

Although most of the media seemed to pick up and run with the fact that Americans have lost their faith in government, what was overlooked is the positive that small business IS trusted.  Let’s take a look at some of the study findings:

pew public view of institutionspew govt attn

Of course, as a small business owner myself, I (as well as other small business owners) have very little government influence.  But, don’t count us out!  Although, we may not have the power or funds of big business to change government, we do have power to change our world. Because we create most of the new jobs (65 percent of all new jobs are created by small companies). We have the power to innovate. And we have the power to create good working environments for our employees.

Do you agree, disagree, or have other “powers” to add?

Social Media Networks an Inside Look

A few months ago, a question was asked in one of the social media groups I belong to on LinkedIn:

“How many social media profiles do you actively manage?”

To date there have been over 830 comments from at least 500 people.  It’s a pretty active discussion.  It made me start to think…what a great informal research project.  So, that’s what we did.  We went ahead and tabulated how many social media networks this group uses regularly and what the most important/popular networks that are being used.

Here’s what we found:

Social Media Accounts LinkedIn users Manage Regularly

Social Networks Usage from Study

I found it interesting that most people that contributed to this called LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook “The Big Three”.  From the results you can see that a good portion of the respondents used these three social networks as their primary focus.

One other thing we found from this Discussion Group was the preferred tools.  Here’s a listing of the “best” tools to help make social media more manageable:

Let me know your thoughts.  Do you agree with the results?  How often do you update your online profiles for work or personal thoughts?