This rings all too true. Companies that get real value from social media put forward informal / conversational narratives from subject matter experts. Granted sometimes its hard to find geeks with the requisite communication skills, but when you do find them they should be out front. Once you get to multiple author blogging it feels like a news service and if there’s something on par with the lack of trust a politician inspires, its a reporter on the payroll.
It’s weird that companies make so little effort to understand the psychology. It’s as if they just want some mechanical lever they can pull. I’m guessing the anonymity of advertising buys, whether web, radio or tv has created this disconnect. You pay an outside firm to think about your brand, then yet another to think about how to connect your brand / products / services with an audience and then hire a mass distributor to crop dust your freshly commissioned message. When pressed to communicate internally you hide behind a PowerPoint and commission “white papers” to be handed out to customers who want to look deeper than your tag line. On second thought its crystal clear why these companies are failing. The only thing protecting them from the consumer apathy they inspire is monopoly money (corporate Amex) and strategic spending (use it or lose budgeting).