When it comes to Social Media, most companies don't have a Clue...Train!

Why are so many companies and ad agencies unable to grasp the importance of social media to their bottom line?

Proctor and Gamble gets it. Johnson & Johnson gets it. And so does Wal-Mart. But the bulk of advertisers in America and their agencies are ignoring the tremendous growth of social media. It isn't just a fad and it isn't a new channel. It's an entirely new opt-in way of doing business.

As Seth Godin described in the Cluetrain Manifesto in 2001, five years before most marketers paid him any attention, markets are becoming a conversation. Companies who fail to realize this and join the conversation do so at their peril.

I understand why it's easy to trivialize the phenomenon of blogging or Twitter when your only question is, "Do I really care that Joe Schmo had pretzels and a beer at 2 a.m.?"

But when you get away from the mundane conversations and you tune in to the ones that are important to your niche audience, you'll hear passionate consumers who can have an effect on your bottom line, one way or the other.

So, go on, you can afford to criticize social media as so much chatter until one day you catch wind of a conversation directed at your customers: "I just got XYZ's latest product. What the hell were they thinking?"