According to a new Citibank survey, more than three out of four small business owners have not found social networking sites to be helpful in either generating new business leads or expanding their businesses during the last year.

An article in Marketing Charts, sent to me by online media expert Sarah Stambler, reports: “Despite widespread consumer use and increasing marketing efforts on social sites among larger organizations, managers in small businesses apparently are not jumping on the (social media) bandwagon.”

Since small businesses have much smaller marketing budgets than large organizations, and since social media is supposedly free, you would think small businesses would flock to social networking sites and embrace social media marketing.

The only reason why they might NOT do so is lack of ROI: even with its low cost, if social media doesn’t generate results, small businesses are not going to use it. They simply cannot afford to waste their time or money on marketing that does not generate positive ROI.

Large organizations can get excited about social media and write articles about its importance, because large corporations often spend millions on marketing programs, like branding campaigns, that generate no discernible ROI.

Make sense? Am I right, wrong, stupid, or crazy?

An increasingly popular buzzword in online marketing today is ?transparency.?

It means the more you reveal about yourself to your prospects, the more they will bond with ? and hopefully buy from ? you.

Transparency is contrary to the classic copywriting rule stated so eloquently by my old direct mail mentor Sig Rosenblum decades ago:

?The reader isn?t interested in you. The reader is interested in her needs, fears, concerns, problems, and desires.?

Transparency represents a paradigm shift of the prospect’s attention from herself to you, the marketer.

Is transparency true? Do you really care which blend the CEO of Starbucks drinks ? or whether Joe Vitale is buying yet another expensive sports car?

I have trouble believing anyone cares much about what I do, like, or think. (Of course, I am more boring than Joe.)

But in case I am wrong, and transparency is what you crave, here are 15 things about me I probably haven?t told you before:

1?I am a grumpy old man ? over 50 ? who is increasingly alienated from our youth-oriented culture.

2?I am a luddite. I don?t own a Blackberry ? a PDA ? a Bluetooth … a wireless laptop ? an iPod ? an iPhone ? a Kindle … or even a cell phone. Nor do I have any need of or use for them.

3?If you held a gun to my head and said I had to send a text message over a cell phone, or a photo over the Internet, or you?d shoot me ? I?d be dead. I do not know how to do these things and have no interest in learning.

4?Although the Internet has eroded my attention span like it has everyone else?s, I am still an avid reader of books, both fiction and nonfiction.

5?While I read widely on a variety of topics, I have recently returned to science fiction, the preferred genre of my youth, and have put up a science fiction web site: www.sciencefictionprediction.com

5?I buy and listen to music on CDs. I do not download from iTunes.

6?Although I read CNN.com every day, my preferred mode of getting news is a newspaper ? a medium my teenage sons say is the most absurd thing they have ever seen.

7?I don?t watch much TV. I enjoy TV as a medium, but there?s not much on I like. I wish there were. My favorite show was Gordon Ramsey?s Kitchen Nightmares, and I hope it comes back.

8?My main hobby, aside from reading, is keeping tropical fish. I have a web site dedicated to this hobby: www.aquariumdetective.com. The latest addition to my aquarium is a freshwater stingray.

9?I also like nature, particularly lakes and rivers. We have a weekend home on a lake, and naturally I have a web site on that too: www.livingonalake.com

10?In school, my original major was chemistry (later changed to chemical engineering), and my goal was to be a scientist.

11?I am not entrepreneurial by nature. The primary reason I became a freelancer in 1982 was that my company asked me to relocate and I did not want to go.

12?I am a homebody. I do not like to travel ? and with rare exception, I don?t.

13?I love writing. I agree with (I think it was) Noel Coward who said: ?Work is more fun than fun.? My two favorite activities are reading and writing.

14?I have two teenage boys, Alex and Stephen, and the most important thing in the world to me is being a good dad.

15?I got married at a young age, in my 20s, and was the only one of my friends to do so. Amy and I have been happily married for 26 years, and we will continue to be so for as long as I live or until she changes her mind.

So there?s my transparency in a nutshell.

Now I have to ask: Is this list as boring to you as it is to me?

Or are these things you really want to know ? and if so, for heaven?s sake why?

I have created a crude metric for measuring whether Twitter is getting you results or just wasting your time.

I call this metric the Followed-to-Follow (FF) Ratio.

It is the ratio of how many people follow you on Twitter vs. how many people you follow.

Your FF Ratio should be at least 10:1, meaning you are followed by at least 10X more people than you follow yourself.

Ideally your FF ratio should be 100:1 or higher. A high FF Ratio means whenever you tweet, a significant number of Twitter users get your tweets, so your message is getting across.

On the other hand, an FF Ratio of 1:10 means for every person following you, you are following ten others.

That?s bad because it means you spend too much time getting and reading tweets, which may be fun but doesn?t get your message across or put money in your pocket.

An FF Ratio of 1:100 or lower means you have a serious social networking addiction and are probably paying too much attention to Twitter.

In addition, spending too much time on Twitter could be hazardous to your professional health: an article on CareerBuilder.com (8/24/09) notes: ?Social media is becoming the latest way for people to get job offers rescinded, reprimanded at work, and even fired.?

What do you think of my FF Ratio? Is it a sensible metric? Or is the FF Ratio way off the mark?

What’s the ROI for your favorite online marketing medium?

My favorite is e-mail marketing.

According to “Taking Names,” a special report from Direct magazine, in 2008 e-mail generated slightly more than $45 in revenues for every dollar spent on e-mail marketing.

I believe this number, because I know myself how to measure revenues from e-mail marketing precisely, so ROI can be tracked to the penny.

(My e-mail ROI is about $75 for every dollar spent on e-mail marketing.)

In addition to e-mail marketing, I also do other marketing activities.

We do a little PPC, and I can also track the revenues generated by Google Adwords precisely down to the penny.

I am also on Twitter and Facebook, but I do not know how to track revenues generated by either or even if they make me any money at all.

Perhaps there are analytics tools for social networking out there that I am just not aware of, and if you can point me toward them, you will have my thanks.

If you cannot track revenues generated by social networking, then I would argue that you cannot reliably and accurately calculate ROI, right?

That being the case, if you are one of the many raving social media fans trying to convince me of its incredible value — why?

Lord Kelvin, the British scientist, said: “If you can measure something in numbers, then you know something about it.”

Conversely, Kelvin’s statement implies that if you cannot measure something in numbers, than you do NOT know much about it.

I am pretty much in agreement with Kelvin. What about you?

In one of my favorite TV cartoon shows Dexter’s Lab, Dexter’s dad tells his wife about her constant talking on the phone: “I can’t stand another minute of this mindless gab.”

I confess that this is often my reaction to social media, and in the most recent as well as past issues of his excellent e-newsletter on copywriting The Copywriter’s Roundtable, my colleague John Forde has indicated a similar sentiment.

He points to a study from Pear Analytics. It found that 40% of Twitter tweets are “babble” and only 8.7% have pass-alone value and news of interest.

The study concluded that “Twitter is a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else.”

While this study is far from a condemnation of Twitter as an absolute time, it’s more evidence that Twitter is largely composed of mindless gab, yes?

Can you really get rich quick on the Internet without doing a lick of work?

That?s what SB, a subscriber, recently asked me.

He writes:

?Bob, what?s your take on the standard Internet guru shtick of the 4-hour work week??

He?s referring, of course, to all those hyped up, high-price ?how to get rich quick on the Internet? programs promising you can make millions working an hour a week.

What I told SB is this: it?s actually sort of true ? but with a big ?but.?

You in fact CAN make a lot of money selling information products online with very little work from week to week.

But that?s only after you?ve created all your products ? your Web sites ? and built your e-list.

And to produce all that is a ton of work up front.

Once it?s finished, you can indeed generate a steady stream of ?passive income? ? with a minimum of additional labor on your part — literally for life.

Passive income is money you make without actually having to work for it.

Listen: all my life I have made money with ?active income.?

As a freelance copywriter, I made (and still make) a handsome living.

But, I have to work for that money ? all the time.

Dentists have a saying: ?If you?re not filling and drilling, you?re not billing.?

Even in a highly paid profession like dentistry, there?s no passive income: you only make money when you work.

So you are always trading time for money.

With an Internet marketing business, once you have an e-list, products, and Web sites, you can begin earning a steady stream of passive income.

It?s thrilling to watch orders coming in via e-mail as you sit at your computer ? doing not a lick of work!

A few weeks ago, for example, I took my family to the beach for 5 days.

Since I didn?t work at all during vacation, my copywriting income for the week was zero.

But my online income was $6,103 ? because a good Internet marketing business runs almost automatically, whether you?re there or not.

You can make more money ? and have an easier life ? when you generate passive income.

And selling information products online is just about the best way I know ? aside from owning income-producing real estate ? of producing more than enough passive income to live on.

When your passive income exceeds your spending, you have essentially escaped the rat race.

By that I mean you no longer have to work, and you are free to spend your time as you wish.

Can this really be done?

I know I have done it, but I don’t expect readers of this blog to take MY word for it.

So … what’s YOUR experience with Internet marketing and “get rich selling information on the Internet” courses and programs?

Do these systems work? Can you actually make money with them? Have you in fact done so? Would you recommend them to others?

Or have you spent a lot of money on “get rich on the Internet” products only to be disappointed? Did these program promoters sell you a load of BS? Do you think everyone selling “make money online” are all hypsters?

Can you REALLY make a lot of money WITHOUT a lot of work? Or is it all a load of manure?

Twitter is a red hot topic at Internet marketing conferences today — touted as the next big thing in social networking.

To me, that’s difficult to reconcile with the fact that, according to a Harris Interactive poll, nearly 7 out of 10 Web users have never even HEARD of Twitter!

The poll found that only 8% of advertisers think Twitter is a “very effective” promotion tool.

An article in eMarketing notes: “While marketers and the media have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, the average U.S. consumer has not. And without broader consumer acceptance — not to mention awareness — it can’t be considered an effective marketing tool.”

The article concludes that unless more Internet users know about and use Twitter, “all the tweets in the world won’t make much difference.”

Do you agree that Twitter is just another over-hyped marketing fad of the month?

Or do you think Twitter is the greatest thing to happen to marketing since the Internet?

And if the latter, can you point to positive ROI from your Twitter marketing?

And by positive ROI, I DON’T mean “I now have 1,200 new Twitter followers” or “my latest tweet drove 878 new subscribers to my blog” or other soft metric nonsense.

I mean “Twitter generated online sales of X dollars” or “Twitter got me a new account with a $3,500 monthly retainer.”

One of my Internet marketing colleagues, GR, hates it when online buyers return his products and request a refund.

He hates it so much, that if someone does it more than once, he “bans” them from all his web sites.

That means he (1) blocks their IP address from his shopping cart so they cannot place another order and (b) unsubscribes them from his subscriber list.

His reasoning is that returns cost time and money, and he doesn’t want to waste either with people who are habitual returners of products.

GR feels that once is OK, but if someone returns multiple products from the same seller, he is deliberately setting out to cheat the seller — and GR will have none of it.

Serial returners aren’t just a problem for online information marketers. Traditional catalogers find them to be a headache, too.

For instance, there are women who will order shoes or a dress from a mail order catalog for a big event, wear them to that event, and then return them for a refund.

Some catalog marketers tag these buyers in their database, and if there are too many returns, removes their name from the mailing list.

What do you think?

Should a business “fire” a customer just because she has asked for a refund once … twice … three times? More?

Or should you just keep selling to that customer in the hopes that, some day, they will actually keep and pay for the information product they ordered from you and no doubt read, watched, or listened to before returning it for refund?

What say you?