While employees can certainly leave comments on other websites, it doesn't look like a whole program (and a cultural shift has occurred) until social media programs are setup for customers.

[...] Social Media FAQ #4: How Do I Launch My Social Media Program? [via Zemanta] [...]

[...] #4 is now available: How do I launch my social media program? Owyang writes about the options, including tapping into existing social [...]

Traditional marketers want to talk about their product and only their product, anything else is a waste of time and money. It’s often difficult to measure the real impact (ROI-wise) of these kinds of social conversations.

How do you respond to these kinds of prejudices, Jeremiah?

As you point out, there is often a massive culture shift at play. In my experience, an internal pilot really helped people understand the what’s and the why’s of Social Media. It’s given employees a place to experiment with and understand the channel while honing their voice in preparation for expanding our external reach.

In my book, internal experimentation is a key approach for most companies struggling to understand SM concepts.

[...] change in the mechanics of the market?   I don’t know what the future holds, but I thank Jeremiah and for getting me thinking about it based on the Tweet below: @oracletechnet says community [...]

While employees can certainly leave comments on other websites, it doesn’t look like a whole program (and a cultural shift has occurred) until social media programs are setup for customers.

what if a company is not fit to have a social media program, but they still want to somehow engage in this space? They wont necessarily have a blog, but they still want to let their customers know that they care, are looking for their input, and what to build relationships beyond (sales and marketing)? What do they do?

BUT, with social communities online, products (and communications efforts) can be “launched” by starting a little snowball down a hill. The benefit of doing so, as you rightly point out, is that you can engage your community in the way the snowball is developing and as it gains speed and size, it has benefited from the “steering” that the whole community contributes.

So expand this research note to every kind of market engagement that a company has — its not just about social media, this is a principle companies should apply to product and service development as well!