I ran across this article today: Hopes and Fears of Social Media Marketing. It shows that more than half of web retailers are using some kind of social media tool, and very few show no future plans to engage in them. I hope that companies and organizations who are not e-tailers can see the value in this.
The fears all seem to revolve around not being able to control the message and not knowing how to use social media for customer engagement. Interestingly, Andy Sernowitz posted this on his blog earlier this week: “If you want to increase control in social media, you need to do more social media outreach so people want to talk with you instead of about you.”
Amen. Don’t be afraid of participating in social media. Be afraid of not participating.