From the Forrester teleconference on Social Technographics, they outlined three challenges organizations face when incorporating social media into their communications strategies:

• Companies don’t know how their customers use social technologies. So true. It’s safe to say your customers are online, but knowing whether they’re using blogs, RSS readers or YouTube is an entirely new challenge.

• Inexperience with what works, when, and why. The social media world is so new, there aren’t any experts (even those who think they are … aren’t).

• Just when you’ve mastered these technologies, something new comes along. An even bigger challenge. I’m finally “getting” this blogging thing, and I have a list of about eight new technologies I want to experiment with.

Forrester ended the call with six suggestions to consider when creating a social computing/social media strategy:
• Understand the Social Technographics profile of your target audience.
• Map out how users will participate — both today and in the future.
• Create multiple participation points.
• Find lightweight ways for first-time Creators to contribute.
• Make it easy for Spectators to find user-generated content.
• Prepare your organization for participation — and criticism.

I’ll add one more: learn from your failures, but don’t give up.