We’re embarking on a project to more formally substantiate the proportion of our influencer partners’ readership involved in small/medium-sized businesses. Specifically, we have reason to believe that SMB owners/decision-makers act much more like consumers in their choice of the online information resources that subsequently affect their purchasing decisions. Further, we want to expose important new insights into how SMBs’ habits differ from those of general consumers, defining and understanding them better. The expected outcome is to help ourselves, our clients and you create more effective marketing campaigns targeted at SMBs, and also to boost your value as a blogger by providing evidence of your influence on this critical segment.

Why are we undertaking this survey? One, because the SMB segment is an integral part of the global economy, as per recent US Census data demonstrating that new and young firms (i.e., SMBs to a large extent) are the primary source of new jobs, and so consequently there’s tremendous value in understanding how they operate; two, to dispel misconceptions about and simultaneously define new insights into SMB decision-makers’ purchasing habits; three, to confidently substantiate such conclusions with statistically significant data; and four, to help you and site owners like you demonstrate the impact and value of your brand.

To that end, we’ve devised a 15-question survey that we’re launching today to gather enough data to arrive at useful and informative conclusions regarding SMB purchasing habits. To drive response rates, we’re offering to randomly award prizes to respondents once the survey period is completed, likely end of July or once we’ve received a minimum of 400 complete responses (this allows for statistical significance of the data). All respondents fully completing the survey with useful answers (i.e., one cannot simply enter nonsense into the text areas) and providing a valid email address will be eligible for a prize. We’ll select winners at random and contact them directly once selected, and then inform participating site owners of their names so you can announce them to the world.

The prizes are:
1. Grand prize: One Lenovo A70z all-in-one PC
2. Second prize: Five prize packages, each containing one of each of the following three devices:
o One LG Bluetooth headset (HBM-210)
o One LG Bluetooth stereo headset (HBS-250)
o One LG Bluetooth Solar Car Kit & Emergency Charger (HFB-500)

To reiterate, the criteria for eligibility for the prize drawing are:
• Complete the full survey (the revenues question (or any other) can be skipped if too sensitive, although we’d of course prefer all questions be answered)
• Supply valid information in the free-text areas (i.e., no nonsensical answers)
• Supply a valid email address

Email addresses will only be used to contact eligible winners and WILL NOT be retained once prize selection has occurred. We WILL NOT share contact data or otherwise contact any respondent.

Doh, link added - might add that unlike the other competitions this is open to everybody not just the US etc.

Marge: I thought you had fixed that issue?

I wish you good luck Evil Marge! HP is not the best provider of service for their machines. My friend sent his laptop back under warrantee and had to wait almost 5 weeks before they sent out a new one because they had LOST his laptop somewhere and were unable to find it!