The suggestion that the vast majority of businesses and nonprofit organizations don't get social media "right" seems to be based on the criterion of interactivity. That is, they do not use it in an interactive manner, but as a one-way broadcast channel to pump out sales promotions and image marketing material, and otherwise have no interest in the community. They are, in effect, scavengers and parasites of the social media rather than participants.
Advocates of social media must search long and hard to dredge up an example of a post that was made by an organization that is of genuine value to the audience. At best, they can find a series of posts in a campaign that might qualify, if you are willing to suspend disbelief or ignore the hooks - but IO have yet to see an example of an organization, commercial or nonprofit, that consistently demonstrates audience-oriented behavior. As a methodology, consider at the last 100 posts that have been made (hopefully, this would be three months or more, not a few weeks) and count the number that are anything but broadcast messages overtly promoting product or soliciting donations - it's likely far less than half.
However, I wonder if it's entirely fair to use interactivity as a sole criterion. We don't apply the same standard to the behavior of people in social media - and while most don't seem to have an overt mercenary agenda (hire me, date me, give me something I want from you), the majority of things that people post are self-centered and superficial. Strictly speaking, to participate at all is to presume that other people care what's going on in your life and want to hear about it, which is inherently egocentric. And so it follows that people post are all about themselves, mostly for image purposes (showing others they are are clever, cool, and interesting) rather than any direct or specific motive to influence others to do something to benefit them (other than acknowledge how clever, cool, and interesting they are).
One ostensible reason that people engage in social media is to maintain a sense of connectedness to one another - such that when they "friend" or "follow" a you, it's because they want to know what's on your mind, and what's going on in your life, even if they are not directly included or impact it. But even if you wish to disclaim that it gratifies your ego, it likely does, and that is why you are willing to feed their interest. As a consequence, social conversation can be characterized by people blabbering about themselves, then listening to other people do the same - and in most instances the thread of a conversation, online or offline, is simply people taking turns speaking and listening.
It occurs to me that there's likely a way to assess this balance by comparing the ratio of original posts to the number of comments on other posts ... but that would be a stilted outcome: people do not comment on everything they read, and in many instances a post doesn't require a response. So while it might seem to measure the level of interactivity, it is merely a measure of loquaciousness - unless you can track the number of things actually read (even if a they do not comment or respond) and not scrolled past, it's not an accurate estimation.
But that's a digression from the consideration of the behavior of organizations in social media. The point I was staggering toward is that, when you consider their core motivation, companies and nonprofits don't behave all that much differently to the way that individuals behave. Just like people, organizations post things that are aggrandize themselves, little interested in what others have to say except as a potential opportunity to make a self-serving comment.
The irony is, that's what they are encouraged to do, even by those who paradoxically suggest they should not do so. Most (and possibly all) advice to businesses for approaching social media includes with particular emphasis the suggestion to conform to the rules and norms of the community. Given that "normal" behavior for people in social media is self-centered, then most organizations are playing by the rules and behaving by the norms.
It begs the question as to whether this is worthwhile advice. There are different rules and norms for marketing letters than there are for personal ones, and it would seem to follow that there would be different rules and norms for organizational behavior in social media, because we understand that it is carefully crafted (rather than extemporaneous) and overtly supportive of a mercenary agenda (rather than covertly or unintentionally so).
Ultimately, it begs the question as to whether it is fair to hold organizations to a separate set of standards in social media - if they behave just as people behave, are they really doing it wrong?
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