Peter Kim, Charlene Li & Jeremiah Owyang at Web 2.0 Expo

The following post was written by social media diva Tessa Horehled, who is representing Wicked PR as a brand enthusiast at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Wednesday, April 1st was the official first day of Web 2.0 Expo! Panels, networking and sessions galore.

The panels kicked off bright and early. Good decision to dip out early on the festivities last night so I could catch an 8:30AM panel hosted by Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang about “Why Social Media Marketing Fails – and How To Fix It.” This power panel revolved around the following four failure points:

• How do I get my culture to adopt?
• How can I make my campaigns work?
• What am I suppose to measure?
• Does social media even matter?

This is what was on tap for the day at the Web 2.0 Expo

There was a lot of fantastic discussion — and the discussion is still going on. You can check out Charlene’s notes and an audio podcast of the panel at the Altimeter Group blog. You can follow the ongoing discussion by following the #smfail hashtag on Twitter.

I hung around the Marketing & Community room most of the day for Micki Krimmel’s “WWCMD? What Would The Community Manager Do?“, Kate Niederhoffer and Marc Smith’s “Beyond Buzz: On Measuring A Conversation” then jumped over to Stowe Boyd and Oliver Marks’ “The Open Enterprise: How Web Tools And Culture Are Remaking Business“. I was a bit underwhelmed by the majority of it. Everyone kicked out the same points that we’ve been hearing for a year – transparency, the need for measurement, and empowering your audience/customers through how you distribute information.

I challenge these industry leaders to go above and beyond next year at Web 2.0 Expo — how can we extend our efforts further? Tell us where you have messed up and what you have learned. What’s next and how can we adapt our current efforts to be ready for it?