Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Clemson University PR professor, offers up an excellent review of the Cone “utter bullocks” claim that “93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media” in their survey.
The survey seems to be another example of doing a “survey to market your company’s services” effort. An effort, by the way, that we see all too often.
Frederic Lardinois wrote about the survey in ReadWriteWeb, Study: 93 Percent of Americans Want Companies to Have Presence on Social Media Sites.
Lardinois does a less than deep evaluation of the study. It is almost as if Lardinois is sharing the information as if it is gospel. Now, to his credit, he does ask some the same questions I have:
It would be nice to see Cone break these numbers down a bit more. What types of social media sites, for example, do users prefer? Are there any specific categories of companies and brands that they want to see on these sites? How exactly do they want to be marketed to? What do they think about implications for their privacy?
Unfortunately, he also shares statements like “60% of Americans regularly interact…”
Extracting those types of quotes from the survey’s results are ludicrous. Simply put, at best the results are that 60% of respondents to the survey believe that Americans regularly interact with corporations online, or some such statement.
Without providing a legitimate methodology report, so that we may judge the veracity of the survey, it is irresponsible to make claims such as “…60% of Americans regularly interact…”
What are some of the problems here?
First, we don’t know anything about their respondent pool except that they answered the survey online. Second, was the respondent pool self-selected, or did the Opinion Research Corporation team (ORC) actually develop a legitimate list of potential respondents? Third, if so … how? Fourth, does Cone and ORC just expect us to believe their claims? Sadly, I think they do.
Now, if you look at the Opinion Research Corporation’s corporate history and milestones, one suspects that they have a legitimate strong history of research. Yet, because they are in business and do not control what their clients do with the final report, the results are
Why can’t we tell you exactly how good or bad the survey is? Lack of transparency on Cone’s part. The methodology statement they offer is pretty much void of any information. “The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study presents the findings of an online survey conducted September 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. The margin of error associated with a sample of this size is ± 3%.”
I am so tired of seeing PR and marketing agencies putting out this type of survey. It devalues legitimate research when they provide no true / realistic / useful methodology report along with their release. Cone doesn’t offer a link to go see the methodology, nor a link to request one. Oh, there is a link to the PR person that wrote the release, but no promise of providing any detailed results if we request them. So, with a hope in my heart, I have now written to Andrea Larrumbide, Cone, alarrumbide@coneinc.com and we’ll see if we can get a true methodology from the survey.
Yes, I’m pretty sure this is another survey designed to market Cone, not designed to truly ascertain social media reach. I’ll let you know if I hear back from Cone.
Update: I did hear back from Andrea. She was kind and provided a PDF breakout of four crosstabs showing male/female responses on some questions. It is so inconsequential, I’ll not share it here. Cone, Andrea writes, has the following policy: “We only share questionnaires and additional results with our clients.” So, there is no way to accurately judge the veracity of this survey’s results or the survey instrument, unless I become a paying client. Let’s see raised hands of all those that think that’s going to happen. Yeah, thought so. After this, I’m convinced … this survey is “utter bullocks” as was suggested by Tim, in the ReadWriteWeb article’s comments.
In the long run, these types of “survey to drive business” efforts do more damage to perceptions of survey research than they do good for the companies that engage in the practice.
Now, the good news is that no traditional news sources have (as of yet) bitten on the release, at least according to Google and Yahoo! searches. Oh, there may be some out there, but I can’t find them. The bad news? Lots of blogs and other sites are spreading the meme with little critique. See Google Web Search, Google News Search, Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Web Search, and Yahoo! News Search
I shared this in SocialMedia, too. Have any of you tried that site?
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