Marketing Profs Releases the Dumbest Survey Ever
I just saw a tweet that directed me to this blog post entitled “Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter “ and my head almost exploded. In fact it irritated me enough that I stopped trying to get caught up from my two-week vacation (that is why updates haven’t happened) and decided to sit down and write/spew this.
While Marketing Profs didn’t post this blog post, the “social media” team from Serengeti Communications did, the ideas being shared are either misrepresenting the survey or making the Marketing Profs team sound pretty inept. Whatever the case may be it shows that traditional PR/Communications people trying to pawn themselves off as social media experts end up ultimately sounding like they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
Where do I start?
1) “if you are planning your entire social media strategy around the marketing tactics of Digg, StumbleUpon or MySpace”
If you are planning your entire social media marketing strategy around any one single site, even Twitter, than you are a complete idiot. Furthermore your strategy shouldn’t just bank on one tool or site just because it is “hot” or “popular”.
Depending on whom, what, and where you are targeting different sites and tools are going to have different benefits. Also you can’t forget to create different outposts, which will allow people to connect to your brand on a platform they feel comfortable with.
2) “According to the MarketingProfs survey of over 200 Twitter users, Twitter ranks behind only blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most value.”
This is akin to going to Wendy’s and asking their customers to rate their favorite fast food restaurants? Who does this? Furthermore who the hell would pay $49 to receive a totally biased survey?
I’m not saying Twitter isn’t powerful or that it shouldn’t be considered in a social media strategy but they are asking people that are already heavily personally or professionally using the service their opinion. Also this is a general question that is so bland when in reality each and every case needs to be strategically thought out. Social media strategy isn’t a cookie cutter fueled deployment. But I guess this is what happens when you want to make a quick buck around the hot website.
3) “Of course there also needs to be research done into where your audience is… If you are a rock band who needs to get the word out, MySpace may just be the place for you. If you are a “green company” and putting out a lot of content around that, Digg could just be a natural place to seed your content.”
Way to attempt to rebound and try to make up for five paragraphs of pure idiocy by generalizing which each site targets. The framed the conversation one way to start out the blog post and then contradicted themselves by throwing this in.
It frustrates me beyond belief when people try and share poor information like this by attaching it to a survey you can purchase. First of all it is taking advantage of people that truly want to learn about this space and are trying to collect information on it. Then you have people spreading the word on said survey, in a manner that doesn’t even do the flawed survey any justice. I don’t know if this post was done in order to curry favor with the Marketing Profs team or just another example of the social media echo chamber that rots original thought.
Simply amazing… I am going to get back to doing quality work for my clients instead of spreading poor information or start drinking… It could go either way.
Hi –
I’m the author of the post that managed to “irritate you”.
Just to let you know, we’re not a PR company nor a Communications company. Perhaps, taking the time to find out more about me and the company would have helped, but I guess that’s what happens when we are quick to fire off posts while on vacation.
So you know, I’ve been doing social media strategy for more than a few months, quite a while in fact. I speak at conferences and write a column on SEW. I do not advocate putting strategies around one marketing tactic – which was what I was trying to get across in the piece. That businesses shouldn’t do that. Many SEO’s will put this out as their “social media strategy” for clients – using just Digg, Stumbleupon or Myspace – this was what this was meant to address.
There was no mis-representation. The chart shows that the business value of these (plus youtube) was not there for these people surveyed. I asked MP for permission to feature this, which is something that other marketers sell as a way to “succeed” in social media.
If you had possibly read through the whole post, you would see I address that each company needs to identify what is their business value would be for their social media strategy. In fact our whole site advocates that.
Hopefully next time, before rushing to judgment, you’ll do a bit more investigating who you are attempting to “crucify”.
Best Regards,
~Li Evans
Li,
How is Serengeti Communications not a communication. It says right on the site you do digital marketing (Marcom goes falls into the same bucket) and freaking communications is right in your name…
Li, I read through the whole post, I cited three things from it from various spots. The survey is poorly conceived and so is your post.
“Many SEO’s will put this out as their “social media strategy” for clients – using just Digg, Stumbleupon or Myspace – this was what this was meant to address.”
You don’t mention SEO’s anywhere in the post. So if this was your main point you did a fairly poor job at addressing it.
Maybe I am being harsh on the MarketingProfs report but I am not being harsh about your post.
There is one part of the report and the post that you have not raised as a red flag. it uses the term value (or business value) but there is no definition. this is a critical error in the survey (which i did not see so I cannot comment) if they did not define value when asking the questions.
value is one of those funny (not ha-ha funny) things that people don’t know how to define. what you consider value (number of views), I may not. thus, without a value definition (which, again may be in the final product but was not on the original post) the survey is biased.
that is, if you ignore that you ask twitter users to rank the “value” of other channels — which is a triple bias.
all in all, if the survey is better than the post, someone from MarketingProfs should clarify that in the original post or they are the ones looking not-so-good.
i do agree with everything else you say here, though.
Great point Esteban….
Esteban,
When it comes to marketing research you are 100% correct! This was NOT marketing research by any stretch. It was a quick poll and is reflected as such in the Twitter Success Stories.
The question asked was “Please rank the following social media sites in terms of providing business value to your company.”
To your point, the ‘business value’ could be anything that meets their goals for social media or is quantified as social media success for them. It could be conversations, it could be engagement, it could be leads.
As well, there is an assumption that those responding have used all channels listed. Given the response count, it looks to be the case.
Thanks,
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte
Beth,
The years of doing surveys and feedback have left scars, one of them is probably lack of tolerance for badly done surveys. I also said in my comment that I had not seen the survey — so i could not comment on it.
However, in second place right after the bad surveys come the bad reports. And quoting a survey as responding on “value” or “business value” without determining what it is is just plain wrong.
It is the equivalent of Consumer Reports writing an article on cars and saying that some of them are expensive, and some others are not. What is the definition of expensive?
I don’t doubt that Li is very smart and good at what she does, but I am not very happy with the way the results were presented — i think it does a disservice to her and to MarketingProfs in the sense that presents the data with little “value” add. (ok, bad pun – i know).
I appreciate your response, but my recommendation is that if you use an informal poll you say so straight up — this is not a real poll, or not a scientific poll, and draw conclusions that are not too specific (as to say this does not work).
Just a pet-peeve,I know…
nothing like a little lightning rod action after some time away! don’t forget the typos in the serengeti post.
read an interesting article on results of recent research on users of social networks http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6156.html. of specific interest: myspace still crushes twitter in user count, but service is discounted because members are not in media centers…
(I think this research was also source of the whole twitter gender thing a while back?)
welcome back!
You know how it goes Todd… Why write something bland?
Thanks for the link, that was a great article. The smaller city/media center point might also tie into the average education/average salary study I saw awhile back when they broke down FB vs. MySpace. I wonder what the correlation would be?
What offends me the most is the realization that all of these comments belong at the end of her post, but have most likely been shot down in favor of the Yes Men.
Throwing up a chart of stats flies in the face of social media anyway. The purchase of such a chart is a sign of the old-school marketing train of thought. It’s called social media because we diversify in order to blanket the market, not favor the winner of the moment. The chart was out-of-date before it was even posted.
Thank you for contesting this. Now I feel a little better.
Adam @Advent Creative Web Design
Adam, just curious…who makes these social media ‘rules?’ that you allude to? And I am not asking on behalf of MarketingProfs or to be snarky. I am asking as me a marketer, blogger, adjunct professor with a lot of years in “social media” before someone even coined the phrase.
Seriously, I’d like to know. Because last time I checked, there weren’t any rules. I think it’s dangerous ground we are walking on when we start throwing around rules.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the discussion on Twitter today, it’s much appreciated. I’d like to clarify a few things since you and your readers probably haven’t seen our Twitter Success Stories piece that Li Evans is referring to in her post.
As for MarketingProfs I can safely say that we are neither a PR or communications agency and that we do have an understanding of social media (I have over 5 years of deep SM experience and am their Community Manager). We share information every single day to help marketers learn, understand and implement their social media efforts. This particular set of social media/Twitter case studies is free to our premium members (the $49 fee is for non-members who would like to have the case studies, but don’t want to be a member).
Regarding our poll…it was just that, a poll. It was a quick pulse check and certainly nothing scientific. It is also not a reflection or representation of all marketers or businesses. It is, however, a reflection of 200 people and where they personally have found value in using Twitter vs. other social media tools. Here’s what we state in our Twitter Success Stories piece:
* The informal survey of Twitter users (mostly @MarketingProfs followers) was conducted from April 11 to 14, 2009. It included 213 completed responses, 66 percent of which were completed by people with fewer than 50 people in their companies. The rest of the breakdown: 101–1000 employees, 14.6 percent; 1,000+ employ¬ees, 11.3 percent; and 51–100 employees, 8 percent.
Knowing that not having all the content/context can affect a person’s position on a topic, I’d like to share the information, if you are interested/curious. A sneak peak of the Twitter Success Stories, which includes the introduction to Twitter, poll results, etc. can be found here: http://bit.ly/4e7cIO. Or, if you’d like to see the actual poll results click here: http://bit.ly/efJtd).
To your point, if we asked Facebook users or Wendy hamburger eaters what they favored, well…we can guess the answer.
I hope this puts us in a better light Kevin… That said, I think it’s safe to say that MarketingProfs was a bit unfairly judged, especially when you (and your readers) weren’t actually reacting to our piece, but instead to a quick snapshot and Li Evans’ opinion of what it offered/represented.
As for the rest of your post, here’s my two cents for what they are worth…
Should any marketer choose one tactic? No. But unfortunately it happens every day whether it’s direct mail or Twitter. And I think Li states the same thing you do…research must be done. I think we also have to remember that not everyone is an expert in social media and that there are A LOT of snake oil sales people out there hopping on the bandwagon to push shiny objects like Twitter, Digg, etc. The other important question we bloggers/social media folks need to ask ourselves: Am I the audience for this post? Often we jump in to criticize or judge when we aren’t the audience for the piece (I’ve done it myself). In this case, I don’t believe you are the audience…Serengeti’s clients and/or prospects are. I am stating this because we all seem to be losing our perspective in this space and we follow “rules” that no one can seem to agree upon or sort out who originated them. And I truly don’t believe it’s the community…because most average consumers could care less about our self-imposed rules (sorry, tangent there).
The last thought I’d like to add here is this… There are a TON of SEOs pushing sites like Digg and StumbleUpon as “social media.” Yes, they are social media tools and yes, inbound links are an important aspect of SEO. Having attended the last two Search Engine Strategy conferences (where Li has talked on the convergence of SEO/social media), I think it’s fair to assume that this might have something to do with Li’s reaction to the poll. The school I come from is that social media is about conversation, sharing and community…not linkbaiting. Hell, it wasn’t even called social media 5 years ago (but that’s my frustration to be discussed another time). Anyway, that’s what works for me and I am sticking to it. So there you have it, a poll of one…me.
Sorry for the long comment… Thanks again Kevin.
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte
Thanks for the insightful and thoughtful comment Beth.
“As for MarketingProfs I can safely say that we are neither a PR or communications agency ..” That wasn’t directed at Marketing Profs but the post itself which I think I have more of a problem with than the actual report itself.
Thanks for sharing the link to Twitter success stories, I will check them out.
A couple of replies to your last two points.
1) The SEO thing wasn’t even posted in the original post and it wasn’t presented by Li until the comment section here. Like I said in reply to her post if that was the goal of her post to comment on strategies of SEOs then she did a poor job.
2) You are right about the “am I the audience for this post” question. Even if that post is directed to their clients or potential clients I shiver when I see how the ideas were presented in there. Kind of a social media scare tactic with incomplete information.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment, I appreciate your perspective and your time.
RE: SEOs… I think Li’s post was meant to be subtle in that regard, but it didn’t work for you. I get that. She is a very well known and highly respected SEO. I’ve seen her speak on Social Media/SEO at SES, SearchCamp and the Online Media Boot Camp (an event we put on together). Kevin, she is actually quite knowledgable on both subjects. I think if you knew her and had a conversation with her, you’d come to see that. ;-) (But, I will leave that to the two of you…)
-Beth