"It may not be as sexy, but a lot of the really cool stuff is happening in other areas," he adds, referring to social media efforts in customer support and product departments, to name two.
Today's consumers post more than 1 million social messages every 60 seconds. In addition to talking about what they do in their personal lives, they're sharing thoughts, comments and complaints about the companies with which they interact. Smart companies are listening to these conversations and using social media for much more than marketing.
Author, speaker and consultant is known globally as an expert in customer management and has worked for clients such as American Express, Apple, Coca Cola and the Government of Australia. He says there is a huge retool going on in corporations to pull social contacts into their operations and treat them like they would any other channel.
"From a broad perspective, social is a lot more than just a channel. We use the term channel, but the first thing I advise is to have a strategy," Cleveland says. "There's marketing aspects, operations aspects and technology considerations, so social is more than a channel, but ultimately you need to bring it into your operations."