Nervous firms fail to exploit social media's business potential

Companies are more interested in responding to complaints than fostering new commercial opportunities

Fear, rather than business opportunism, is driving enterprises to engage with social media sites, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

"There's a lot of pressure on companies to monitor what's being said about them on social networks. They don't focus on return on investment because there's such a prevailing sense of urgency," said Alcatel-Lucent chief marketing officer Nicolas de Kouchkovsky.

He explained that when businesses discover stories of incidents where customer complaints posted on social networking sites have gone viral, they are often "terrified" of the same thing happening to them.

"There's such a sense of urgency to respond to what is being said. Sometimes it's panic. And as a result the idea of having to justify return on investment is a conversation that is taken off the table," he said.

The company has been showcasing its own social network monitoring solution at its Dynamic Tour 2011 event in Barcelona.