BL Ochman reported today that 19% of small and medium businesses are using blogs as marketing tools:

Nineteen percent of small and medium sized businesses report that they are using blogs as marketing tools. That’s according to Interland’s 2005 Small and Medium-sized Business Barometer. Given that the majority of the population still doesn’t know a blog from a hole in the wall, that’s pretty damn remarkable! My guess is that most visitors to blogs don’t even realize they are reading a blog.

While it would be great if this were true – a closer inspection of the results of Interland’s 2005 Small and Medium-sized Business Barometer (pdf format) shows that 19% of small and medium businesses “use or are interested in using” [emphasis added] blogs.

This “or are interested in using” is an important distinction! On the positive side – it shows an awareness of blogs by a fifth of business leaders in the smb sector which is encouraging.