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NEW YORK – May 5, 2010 –New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. has published a new report on how U.S. small and medium business (SMBs) are using social media and what their usage tells us about how IT marketers should use social media to target SMBs.

Nearly 70% of U.S. SMBs use social media including Facebook, MySpace, blogs, YouTube, Twitter and much more. Although the number of SMBs using social media has grown drastically over the last few years the industry’s understanding of what drives SMBs to uses these tools remains limited. In addition, the understanding of how SMBs should be reached through social media is even less known.

“It’s crucial to understand the “Rules of Engagement’ when using social media in the SMB space, says Chad Thompson, Vice President of AMI’s Marketing Strategy Group. “Although the medium in many cases is new, characteristics of the SMB market haven’t changed. Effective use of social media to drive ICT purchases in the SMB space is more science than art; this is what this report helps explain.”

The below slide illustrates the current usage of various social media among U.S. small and medium businesses. Although it has doubled in growth since 2007, social media usage among SMB’s remains very narrow in scope. “The use of social media still proves to be a difficult concept for SMB’s to align their business with, in terms of administering the full breadth and depth of the online tools and maximizing their return on marketing investment (ROMI),” said Jacqueline Atkinson, Social Media Manager of AMI-Partners. Only 30% of small businesses perceive social media as strategically important to their continued business success, in contrast to the 61% of medium businesses that do so.

AMI will be launching a series of marketing and go-to-market related studies called AMI’s SMB Marketing Optimization Series. This series will include two multi-client studies focusing on social media, best practices to market to SMBs, and assessing SMB’s marketing spend. For more information about AMI’s SMB Marketing Optimization Series please contact Chad Thompson at cthompson@amipartners. com.

The countries included in this research are: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, France, Germany, UK, China, India, Korea, and Australia. To find out more about AMI’s vertical intelligence and how to better prioritize and capture their ICT spending please contact Chad Thompson at cthompson@ami-partners.com.

For more information about these studies, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@amipartners.com or visit our website (www.ami-partners.com).