As Kat reported last week, Gartner estimates that 50 percent of all social media efforts will fail. She also explains how you can be in the 50 percent that do not, so I would recommend you read her post.

But as we continue to see social media push through growing pains at businesses, large and small, it’s important to remind ourselves what defines success and what premeditates failure. As I commented on Caroline McCarthy’s CNET post highlighting the same Gartner research:

The problem with companies doing social media badly is they are not asking enough questions on the front end and not asking the right questions on the back end.