As luck would have it, I saw this Social Media For Small Business in my morning RSS feeds. I sent it on through email to my friend who’s email about small businesses and social media and networking I posted yesterday. Here’s what he responded with.
“This whole thing is a good example of useless information, baseless statistics and questionable reporting. It just shows how misinformation and questionable results make their way into “factual reporting”.
First: “Small businesses rated Facebook the most effective social networking sites” – That’s gotta tell the whole story right there.
The ratio is almost the same for every question: 16% 29% 55%. That indicates a very small sample. Also, “Somewhat beneficial” is completely innocuous, don’t you think? So it’s really:
Yes: 16%
No: 84%
Also, note the source:
“Ad-ology Research is a division of Columbus, Ohio-based Sales Development Services, Inc. – a family-owned company founded by C. Lee Smith in 1989.” and the Sales Development Services Inc. base web site at:
Note there that they haven’t updated their “History of Innovation” since 2008.
I wouldn’t consider them authoritative… It’s one of those things – “Gee, it must be the truth – I saw it on the Internet”
He’s giving me a lot to think about. How about you?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Gregg,
I wanted to let you know that sample size for the Ad-ology Small Business Marketing Forecast was 1,100 small business owners, making it one of the largest studies of its kind. You can read the entire press release here http://tiny.cc/uXTeA.
Thanks,
Michelle
Michelle,
Thank you for taking the time to find this, stop by, and then clarify. This whole social media and small business issue is certainly generating some interest.