The lead on the press release sounds great: “Initial results of the “Business Case For Blogging” survey by Write2Market show that over half of business bloggers report closing sales through leads they receive through their blog. This statistic, along with other surprising results, paints an unexpectedly rich landscape of sales opportunities for businesses that blog.”

Reading on, though, you find this: “The survey is still gathering significant results. Business bloggers and other interested parties are invited to take the survey. Results are instantly available to all survey takers.”

That’s right. It’s a SurveyMonkey survey open to anybody who drops by. I’ve worked with communication research long enough to know that you need to qualify the participants in a survey to ensure they are who they say they are and in order to get a representative sample. This survey—evidently thrown together by an independent freelance writer—may get some attention from those looking to validate business blogging, but I’d wait for results from a study that employs the principles of sound research.