I also agree with you that too many marketers are using social media as another broadcasting channel. Thankfully those that do that fail fast. Unfortunately they are giving all marketers a bad rep again.

The Epsilon study – should we be surprised? It is still an innovator/early adopter market and we know that there are not too many of those in marketing departments. All that being said, and considering the average tenure of CMO’s, it is surprising that not more of them are jumping for the lifeline that social media marketing provides them in tough economic times.

According to a survey by Epsilon, 55% of top-brand CMO’s said they’re not interested in incorporating these and similar social-networking sites into their marketing strategies. Overall, strategic use of social-networking platforms remains low, even among those who say they have interest in them. Only 10% of CMO survey respondents said they are using social sites for their marketing plans.

It seems to me that this all points to a reliance on traditional media and an ever important emphasis on demonstrating results. There’s value in finding out where your consumers are and communicating with them in a manner that they respond to but I’ve often felt that these social-networking sites narrowly appeal to young adults and provide significant challenges as far as measuring results and yielding actionable data.

The common attitude is let’s build Facebook Page, post a video on YouTube, get into Twitter. But it’s the same old one-way mentality of broadcasting to, not with. There’s not enough time spent spectating and participating with these networks to understand that it’s about commenting, being open to differing opinions, responding and – most importantly – making changes based on the feedback and conversation that is taking place.

I find Facebook pretty coy, and being a very (late) adopter immediately adjusted my habits on other networks to match the coyness. I also immediately decided not to feed Twitter into FB as Twitter seems to run with a more immediate time line. Facebook has a ‘weekly’ timeline or something like that. FB is so coy most employees don’t indicate where they work!

On shallow or deep, I see the social networks just as an extension of networking into the virtual world. Just as the telephone once meant I didn’t have to walk to my neighbour’s house, now I communicate more readily over longer distances. Today I had a long rambling phonecall to someone at the other end of the earth – not possible even three years ago. Quicker, easier, further – but not displacing any normal human goals! It’s made a huge difference to settling in the UK and as I had moved countries and towns twice in the previous 5 years, I have something of a benchmark.

Too long for a comment, I am sorry!