Why Social Media Fails–and How to Fix It was a panel that included Peter Kim of the Dachis Corporation, Charlene Li of The Altimeter Group and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. The audio from the session can be heard here. They covered issues that most marketers are trying to determine how to address when it comes to instituting social media programs:

1. How can I get my culture to adapt?
2. How can I make my campaigns work?
3. What am I supposed to measure?
4. Does social media even matter?

The comments by the panel and comments and questions from the audience were interesting. I agreed with some and didn’t agree with others. I urge you to listen and decide for yourself. In my humble opinion (ok, I’m not actually that humble), the answers to these questions are:

1. Business cultures probably don’t need too much adoption so long as you don’t approach the Head Hancho with a plan for “social media marketing.” Executives have always been open to “how to achieve the company goals.” Your plug for funding your programs would be better received if you highlight how “participating the market conversation” and “interacting with Influencers, Participants and Listeners” of the market conversation will achieve increased sales win ratios, more qualified direct leads, shorter sales cycles and reduced costs in consumer research.
2. You can’t make your social media campaigns work. As Charlene commented during the session, you need to stop considering these tactics as campaigns. What you can do to get quantitative results is to continually practice, as a company, active interaction with the market conversation ecosystem, whether through social media technologies or at a face-to-face meeting. Don’t forget, though, that ecosystem will turn you off if you come at them with the same old marketing bullet points and sales pitches. Don’t talk at people, have a conversation with them.
3. First and foremost, you need to measure what prompted a sale. No matter what, marketing can only be measured successfully if you know why your customers actually purchased. Brand building is very important, but not that measurable in statistics. What finally prompted a sale to happen is something you can easily ask your customer. Other than that, you want to measure the amount of interaction your company has with current and potential customers, the quality of the market conversation content (do they mention your company/product? Are your product offerings in line with what the market conversation says it wants/needs? Are you listening to the conversation to make sure your roadmap is going in the right direction? Are you addressing the market conversation with how to help fulfill their wants and needs or just with why your product should be what fulfills those wants/needs?
4. Absolutely. People are social. We build vast and complex networks of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community members, etc. With the new technologies now available these networks have become even larger and more complex. People want to know. They want to share. They’re looking for advice. No one is an expert on everything, and no matter who you are, there will be a time when you have a want or need to fulfill but you don’t want to make a decision without the knowledge of experts. You’ll hope to find someone who can share their experience on fulfilling the same need or want.

The Conversation is what businesses need to focus on and social media technologies are the crowning jewel of tools to achieve that.

Next on the agenda is a Web2Open unconference session to talk about engaging with the market conversation ecosystem to achieve business goal. And later, Tara Hunt’s session: The Whuffie Factor: The 5 Keys for Maxing Social Capital and Winning with Online Communities which will cover these five key points from her soon to be released new book The Whuffie Factor.