[praized subtype=”small” pid=”66afa9c1b5e4cd2f613f200ec61d955d” type=”badge” dynamic=”true”] just released some interesting data around small merchant social media usage coming from their Local Commerce Monitor study.

Highlights:

• 9% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) currently use Twitter to market their businesses.
• 32% of SMBs indicated they plan to include social media in their marketing mix in the next 12 months by using a page on a social site such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.
• 39% of SMBs plan to include customer ratings or reviews on their own Web sites
• 31% plan to include links or ads placed on social sites or blogs.
• The study revealed adoption of social media by SMBs is more prevalent among younger businesses. For example, 16% of SMBs that have been in business for less than 3 years use Twitter to promote themselves

What it means: still think real-time conversation and social media for small merchants is a fad or a dream? Think again. We’re only seeing the point of the iceberg. SMB adoption is now on the radar screen and will grow tremendously in the next 18 months.