This is not going to be a long post – more of an introduction to the idea that Small Business doesn’t have much of a clue on how to do Social Media or measure the ROI of SM.   I gathered as much reading SMB’s, Social Media and Reality in Marketing Pilgrim, today.  Here’s some of the highlights published in the post which came from a recent survey by Internet2G Into and Merchant Circle

• 45 percent of those surveyed use social media (including Facebook and Twitter) to promote their business
• 79% of respondents report annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year with the 44% spending “less than $1,000” annually on advertising and marketing
  80% of respondents have four or fewer employees
• Asked about their “biggest complaint” regarding online marketing the top two were “too costly” (26%) and “there’s not enough time to do it well and still run a business” (15.9%)
• 75% said they monitor online reviews of their business. The most common method was by visiting specific review websites (47%) and by searching on their business name (44%)
• Despite its popularity social media showed the biggest gap between SMB adoption and perceived effectiveness as a marketing platform.

But, then, looked at, another way, it turns out that

….. If an SMB has gone through the trouble of completely engaging with Merchant Circle but only 45% of those who are that far along the curve have said they use social media (like Facebook and Twitter) to promote their business then what about the millions of other SMB’s who still think the Yellow Book is the most effective spend of their precious marketing dollars? I would say that the last point in the above list is the most telling of them all.

Interestingly, when I was in Minneapolis last week I came across a company called CloudProfile that was created to address just that problem – and they have done big, big deals with British Telecom in UK and some upcoming US deals look very promising.

Here’s my CloudProfile, btw.

I will have more to say about CloudProfile, shortly – right now I suggest my readers take a look at it, as it simplifies Social Networking and Search for small businesses – and there will be an iPhone Application released sometime over the next month or two.