Has Social Marketing Truly Reached Big Business?

Great post this Monday by Jennifer Laycock entitled How Social Media (Didn’t) Change Business. At first I thought it might be a rant (albeit a well-deserved rant) about how many businesses have failed miserably at monetizing social media. Instead it was a very well thought out piece that explained how social media wasn’t a new business model, but instead was a return to the way business was carried out decades ago.

And in a lot of ways, I think that is true. You won’t be able to place ads on Facebook and make millions of dollars, but you might be able to integrate your company into facebook in a way that gives you millions of hits.

I feel as though Twitter, of all social networking sites, is leading the way in terms of providing a model on how businesses can promote good will while providing customer service. When I read the first story about this, I just thought it was a fluke. Then I read about how even Comcast was solving customer issues via Twitter, and I knew it was real, because honestly - Comcast?

Still, I feel as though this is only the tip of the iceberg - and in a bad way. I am all for this use of Twitter. But I am sure that if the news of this successful foray into social media by businesses reaches the CEO offices of the Forbes 500, we are in for some embarrassing and expensive attempts to monetize social media.