Women business owners get ‘social’

Women in business go online. Women are taking to online media to buy and sell products and are leading the way when it comes to social marketing.

Women are leading the way when it comes to embracing modern technology, according to a recent study.

Research undertaken by American Express has found that female Australian business owners are more likely to use social media than men.

The poll of 1,031 local business owners has revealed some surprising insights into the way companies engage buyers.

And it seems that more and more women are jumping on sites such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn in a bid to boost profits, with 43 per cent of them using at least one form of social media.

But their male peers are not so keen to take up this new marketing practice and only 37 per cent of men with businesses promote themselves on these platforms.

Also, it was discovered that 48 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men sell items from their different product ranges online – as many as 35 per cent of female business owners use Facebook, compared to only 24 per cent of men in a similar role.

Yet despite the positive results experts are still unsure why women are leading the charge when it comes to social marketing.

One expert told Business Day that she felt women in business were excelling in the online space due to a range of transferable characteristics.

Suzi Dafnis, director of the Australian Businesswomen Network, told the news publication that members of the fairer sex were good communicators.

She also said that women find social networks – which are essentially sites dedicated to sharing information and content – an appealing option for this reason.

Ms Dafnis suggested that women look beyond familiar sites and consider setting up a business page with Google+.

"The benefit of a Google page over a Facebook page is that it's Google. You've got the world's biggest search engine indexing your page," she asserted.

But women aren't just chatting to friends when they log on or promoting products that can be found in a traditional bricks and mortar store.

The study also found that women are the number one online retailers in Australia, operating a range of businesses from their laptops.

With recent reports showing that almost two thirds of female shoppers are going online this Christmas, it is probably not so surprising that the people selling to them are also female.

So it seems that women are becoming increasingly internet savvy and looking to the web to build their business.