Not taking it seriously and jumping in. As marketers, we need to make sure our messages are where our customers are.  They are in the social space, so, that's where we need to be as well.

I think lack of planning and forethought is one of the biggest blunders a lot of companies make. They think if they sign up all they have to do is wait for the people to find them. It's never that easy. It doesn't work that way with any other type of advertising or marketing programs. You have to be involved. Social media is just like any other tool. If you don't pick up the hammer and swing it, the nail is never going to move.

I have found that many companies and their management believe that social media is a low cost alternative to traditional media when in fact it can be as expensive if not more so. The message they need to get out starts off being delivered by an army of one (or a very small number) to audience that is very small. As time goes on, if the message is compelling (read interesting enough to talk about) perhaps the audience gets larger. There are things that can't be changed in my view and one of them is that the development of new business cost money, lots of it. The difference now is that many of the costs now are hidden or not recognized as costs.

Thanks for your response to my note Ira Ira. I obviously wasn't clear in my answer because I agree fully with you on the relationship building aspect of social media and the importance of relationships to success. What I could have said, and it would have been clearer, is that management sometimes believes that relationship building done by social media is a low cost option to other types of relationship building when in fact it isn't. It takes a lot of time to build a relationship and that time costs money. The other side, which you pointed out, is the management which dismisses Social Media out of hand as a fad and that too will become very expensive since businesses which don't embrace new ideas, of all kinds, will be destined to fail because they will be uncompetitive.

I tend to agree with Ira.  The biggest mistake many employers are making of late is an attempt to evaluate the ROI based on new sales, while the real benefits may come from improved loyalty, lower turnover, higher customer satisfaction etc.. (Also sad to say that lost sales outpace new sales in many industries - a comparative measurement for retention also seems warranted on the new sales basis.)

  I would take this idea one step further and say that the ROI equation is being applied unilaterally, with regard to anything considered an overhead expense, including company personnel.  Stated succintly, The tangible and immediate is taking greater precedence over the intangible (non-measurable) and the long-term.

  Generally, smaller businesses currently have an advantage in the social media market as they are most willing to embrace change while established businesses are most concerned with preserving their bottom lines.SM is yet to be recognized as a priority for most until it can be proven to lead to a tangible revenue source.  The prevailing mindset among many is that SM is simply seen as another way to spend when most companies are still searching for ways to reduce the expenses already appearing on their P&L's.

The biggest blunder of Management in my opinion is what I refer to a  Short-sighted Mouse-vision. .