"Social media can be a great way of increasing brand awareness, customer engagement and long term loyalty and generating a short term boost in sales, but it's also a potential minefield and in the worst case, a bottomless pit into which you endlessly shovel money with nothing much to show for it."
The rise of the social Web has led to a fundamental shift in the way businesses of all sizes engage with their customers. Rather than focusing on "touch points" during the marketing and sales process, they're using social technologies to form meaningful, ongoing relationships that involve frequent online interactions, oftentimes through social channels.