Canadian Business Leaders Believe Social Media is More Important Than Mass Media

According to a report being released tomorrow by Veritas Communications (available tomorrow at this website), almost 50 percent of business owners in Canada believe that social media is becoming more important than television, radio, newspapers and magazines. 36 percent believed that that social media will never be as powerful as traditional media. One interesting statistic from the report shows that a majority of business executives believe that social networking sites are time wasters and employees shouldn’t be using them while at work.

I honestly can’t disagree with the executives unless of course your job revolves around social media. If your work involves social media, the findings of company expenditures next year on social media probably won’t excite you. According to this survey, 12 percent of executives plan on spending more on social media marketing next year. 39 percent will spend the same amount and a whopping 32 percent “don’t spend any money on it at the moment and don’t intend to in the future.”

One other interesting finding of the survey was that a majority of executives had added a profile to a social networking site and check it at least occasionally. The lesson learned here is that many executives are on sites like MySpace and Facebook but none of them are spending money on advertising on the sites. I wonder if these findings would be significantly different among U.S. executives. Do you think these findings are encouraging?

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.