I have written before about how a lot of senior managers do not understand social media. So I was not surprised to read in BtoB Online that small business owners are confused about web 2.0 also.

The survey of 338 business executives at companies with fewer than 500 employees showed that there is still a large education gap when it comes to social media marketing.

For example asked why they do not have a company blog , the top reason cited for nonuse was “don’t see its value” (57%), followed by “don’t understand how to use” and “none of the sites I visit offer this format (both at 22%).

For social networking sites, the most common reason given for nonuse was “don’t see its value” (54%), followed by “none of the sites I visit offer this format (25%) and “don’t understand how to use” (22%).

When asked how many RSS feeds they subscribe to, 51% said one to three, 19% said four to six, 9% said more than six and 21% said they didn’t know.

One reason I think that PPC marketing has been so successful is that it is easy for executives to understand. Social media marketing (like search engine optimization) is a much harder concept to get their arms around.

Social media marketing is not simply linkbating to sites like Digg. It is about delivering your content to your customers how they want to receive it. That could be via blogs, video or community based sites. It is about engaging in a two-way conversation with your customers.

Until we as social media marketers can find a way to distill the concept of social media market into a 1-2 sentence marketing message, we will have trouble getting the majority of business executives to understand and buy into the concept. Until they understand it, the budget will not be available for social media marketing.

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