Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has released a report that predicts that half of all social marketing initiatives will flop. He presented his findings Thursday at a Gartner IT Symposium in which he projects that 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes.
Many in the industry think Sarner’s conclusion is off base and overly pessimistic. I actually agree with Sarner. Most will fail for one of three reasons: (a) the strategy driving the idea sucks; (b) the execution sucks; or (c) the program provides no value to the end user.
