Social media is providing a great low-cost marketing channel for small businesses in the U.S., according to the latest survey by local business networking site Merchant Circle.

• 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing, up from 50% in the same period the year before*
• 40% of local businesses use Twitter, up from 32% the year before
• 32% use Facebook Places vs. less than 9% using Foursquare
• 37% said that creating a profile on a social network is a highly effective marketing/advertising method

This fifth Merchant Confidence Index survey, for the first quarter of 2011, was fielded online between January 22nd and February 3rd, 2011. The 8,456 total responses came from a random sample of MerchantCircle’s member base of over 1.6 million local business owners across the U.S.

*as reported by BtoB Online