Can you spot the Irony here?
A few problems with this;
a) You can’t say social media marketing doesn’t work, and plaster the article with social media sharing buttons. Which is it?
b) The article states that already ubiquitious brands (Starbucks and Subway) are ONLY seeing a 2% revenue increase. Starbucks did $9.8B in the latest (2009) annual report. That would reflect an increase of $192M. Where are you getting your definition of “doesn’t work”?
c) The content of this article is 100% about Location Based Services (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.), NOT Social Media Marketing as a strategy. Even if the content had any merit (it doesn’t), the title is shit. It’s irresponsible to mislead readers for the sake of a catchy headline.
How many small business owners were dreading getting started with social media in the first place, saw this article and said “phew, I didn’t want to learn that stuff anyway”. Luckily I don’t think many of them read SAI, but page-view driven opinion presented as fact to the less seasoned reader frustrates me greatly.
