Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group’s founder Charlene Li, and Peter Kim, an enterprise social-technology researcher are all over the social media trends. This post on their talk yesterday at Web 2.0 Expo is right on the money. Ironically, I was giving a talk to top brands in LA that morning and many of my core points are echoed in the post by Lauren McKay that talks about the failures of social media that we can learn from.

Here are the top points on the barriers that are preventing corporate success of Social Media. Jeremiah, Charlene, and Peter (everyone should be following their blog and here if you want to keep up to date on the trends in social media) points are worth repeating:

1. Social media doesn’t match up with our corporate culture.
2. My social media marketing campaigns aren’t working
3. I don’t know how to measure this stuff.
4. I’m not sure social media matters, anyway.

In fact, Owyang pointed out Dell’s tremendous success now in social media, which essentially sprouted from many failed attempts. It’s been a similar strategy for mega-brand Wal-Mart, as well, Li added. Wal-Mart, she said, has kept at it for years, picking itself up after failures and coming ahead stronger with its buyer blogs and mom communities. Kim summed it up by saying that social media might not have the implications on a brand that one would expect — but it will — and soon.

Within the conversation of social media fails, Owyang revealed what he sees to be as three main ways organizations interact with social media:

1. The "tire": Social media comes from the edges of the company and is authentic because there are key stakeholders who are interested and invested in furthering social media efforts. However, Owyang said, one side of the tire has no idea what the other side of the tire is thinking or doing — and that can be a problem.

2. The "tower": This approach occurs when management wants to centralize social media. On the upside, this means that employees will have common strategies and resources. However, it "tends to look like rehashed press releases," Owyang said. It’s not authentic and customers can tell.

3. The "hub-and-spoke" model: This is when people from different parts of the organization come together under a centralized goal, but they all link out to different business groups. It’s cross-functional, yet not exactly centralized.

I have just compiled my 4 years of social media research, and I am now doing private briefing with brands and marketers to share with them my results and my vision for the future. Social media marketing is real and the current problems and failures are actually opportunities. If you’re interested email me at johnfurrier at gmail dot com.

I recently outlined the Four (4) stages of social media. It is my opinion and my angle that we will stay a few more years in the practitioner stage so that methodology and implementation standards emerge.