A recent survey suggest that while six out of 10 small business owners say they believe social media tools are valuable to their company’s growth, just three percent of the 835 surveyed believe Twitter has the most potential to help the company. Twitter faces challenges convincing small business owners of the advantages of using the short-messaging system to reach customers and expand their brands.

According to the survey, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International, 41 percent of respondents believe LinkedIn to be the most potentially beneficial to their companies. YouTube scored 16 percent and Facebook 14 percent.

“Twitter says it is just beginning to court small businesses, which make up the bulk of U.S. companies, and are an important revenue source for many tech giants, including Google,” reports WSJ.

“We’re just at the start of both of these efforts,” said Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s VP of global online sales, noting that about 4.5 million smaller businesses use Twitter.

In total, about 14 percent of the surveyed business owners used Twitter at all. “That’s in line with research released last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that about 15 percent of all online adults are Twitter users,” the article adds.

“Twitter said nearly a year ago that it would begin to let small businesses buy ads on the service, to circulate their Twitter messages more prominently or to targeted groups of Twitter users. Previously, Twitter allowed only larger companies to buy ads on the service. But it acknowledges that it has moved slowly with the small-business ad service to make sure it’s just right. The ad service remains in a test mode with a selected group of clients.”