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Yesterday, at the launch of a new online community for female entrepreneurs, Women Unlimited, Ecademy’s Penny Power gave a great speech on the power of social networks. When she launched Ecademy a decade ago, she hadn’t realised that that was indeed what it was – a social network. But ten years down the line, you can’t avoid the term. So for British companies, the news that more than half (60%) of Americans now interact with companies via a social media website (think facebook, linkedin, cmypitch.com – that sort of thing) should be something of a wakeup call.

The survey, carried out by Cone LLC, found that 93% of Americans felt a company ‘should’ have a social media presence. We could reject that by saying that members of the public aren’t all business people, so don’t have to be listened to. But such arrogance can’t be extended to the percentage of Americans that believe a company should interact with its customers by social media: 85%. 56% of those questioned felt a stronger connection to companies they could interact with in a social media environment.

Britain, and the world, often takes America’s lead, and the US attitude does appear to be a step ahead in this field. As such, there are still plenty of British companies that feel such a presence isn’t necessary for them. Well, they might be right, for now. But the teenagers of today will be the consumers, the businesspeople, and the influential players of tomorrow. And the way they do things is very different from their parents’ generation; they live and breathe social media. For franchises, the benefit of reaching potential franchisees is clear.

For small and medium businesses, a social media presence should not be seen as the same as having a website. It shouldn’t be seen as being ‘pushy’. What it represents is a huge shift that is allowing companies to interact with individuals on their terms, on their level. To a certain extent, no social media presence will mean no presence at all.