My friend Michael Stelzner never ceases to amaze me. When I met him at San Diego, he was talking about creating a Social Media Marketing Survey. The report, called the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, was released on Tuesday and I had the opportunity watch how Mike and his friends worked hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

Please check out the report (it’s simply awesome) and those that are curious about how this all happened, Mike shares his secrets in this interview:

RS: Tell us Mike, what prompted you to embark on this exercise?

MS: Well Raj, we noticed there was no research on how marketers are actually using social media.  Nobody examined the time commitment or the tools that folks are using.  This surprised me and I decided to do something about it.

I put together a rather comprehensive survey and leaned on some of my high profile marketing peers to help me get the word out about the survey.  David Meerman Scott, author of World Wide Rave, was the first of many to help me spread the word about the survey.  Hundreds of folks helped me get the word out.  About 10 days later we had nearly 900 marketers who participated in the study.  That ensured a very rich set of data to dig into.

RS: Please take us through the project life-cycle. How did it evolve and its journey from concept to launch?

MS: It all started as an idea while driving to work on a Thursday morning.  By Friday (the next day), I had the survey made and began collecting responses.  We closed the survey 10 days later and began the process of analyzing hundreds of open ended responses and performing some analysis–this part took months.  The man hours were pretty extreme as my team tried to discover the key findings.  And I was really shocked at some of the results.  Perhaps, more than anything, was the amount of time marketers are investing in social media and how new they are to this marketing frontier.

RS: You do so many things brilliantly. It seems like you have sixteen hands and two brains all operating at once. What is your secret Mike?

You make me sound like some odd alien creature :).  I’m just human like everyone else. But I am a highly disciplined guy with a small bit of creativity poured on top by my maker.  For me, it’s about a vision.  I start with the end in mind, and call on my resources to help me pull off what seems impossible to others, in a short time.  Keep watching, there’ll be more surprises coming from me.

RS: Where can our readers get the report?

The report is available for immediate download here

Thanks Raj!