If you look at Intuit's efforts with social media, the company's preference is to build forum communities where customers and accountants support one another, conversation between Intuit and customers does exist, but the costs for engagement are lowered by managing the community and Intuit advocates effectively.
Instead of assuming everyone needs to be engaged, I think companies can carefully plan out how they will deploy their resources for relationship building or community management.
1) Understand the scope of your community
Time is a critical factor in social media marketing, by understanding how often people write, and who is in the community you'll have a better understanding of what resources need to be deployed.2) Develop a process for triage and response
You may not need to engage everyone, or for that matter building community may be more about supporting advocates. Develop a simple but effective way to triage and respond to social media conversation opportunities and threats.3) Understand the value of online community engagement
If you are Dell, the value of each consumer is considerably less than a company like Emerson Process Management where each lead may be worth $1 million. While the potential value from engagement comes not just from new sales but also higher customer satisfaction, and more ideas to fuel innovation.Link to original post