OMG! That is one boring headline! Not even sure it’s link-bait for Twitter.

That said, I’m going to call it like it is. We are still seriously blinded by the flashbulbs of social media. Everyday I see PowerPoint decks full of copy-and-paste logos of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn proclaiming, “If we don’t do this, we’re dead.” I don’t really know what these presentations and the people who deliver them are saying. Do what? Stuff? Really? Is that what we’re talking about? Doing stuff?

Especially in B2B, this is the case. If I see another Facebook logo on a B2B presentation, I might barf a little. You sell machines that pump out auto parts! Or logistics software! Or industrial strength windmill lubricants! (I made that up.) Do you really think the dude who’s going to write you a check for $10 million is out there on Facebook saying, “Today, I went sledding with the girls. Then I made a turkey sandwich (here’s a picture of it), and now I’m going to buy 4,300 drums of lube from Mega-Fast Windmills!”

Social networks are like anything else you do in business. There are certain fundamental questions that you need to ask before you spend or make money. Let’s take a look at three that I obsess about on a daily basis.

1. What Are the Opportunities?
So you want a Facebook page. Or to start a LinkedIn community. Or to Tweet the b’jeeb out of your daily life. Why? What are you trying to accomplish? What will success look like and how will you measure it? Launching these social puppies is easy. (I wish it cost $250,000 to launch a business Twitter account. Someone would care.) Solving a problem for your customers or associates isn’t. In analyzing these networks, you need to seriously question how you will be adding value to your customers’ experience, your brand, and your operations. If you’re going to launch a social presence, articulate very clearly what need you’re filling or what problem you’re solving.

2. Who’s Going to Use This?
Back to our windmill friends on Facebook. What if you learn that most of your buyers’ IT departments do not allow access to Facebook on their corporate networks? We have a bit of a problem, yes? Look, I’m all in favor of collaboration and knowledge sharing and open access to the people within companies—but it’s equally important to know whether the people with whom you want to collaborate can even do so or desire to do so. I’m guessing they do, but having absolute certainty is critical. Most of the social ghost towns were developed by companies that didn’t understand how their customers wanted to interact with them.

3. Do We Have the Skills Internally to Succeed?
As I’ve stated here on a weekly basis, I don’t believe becoming a social enterprise is a marketing function. It’s a business function that crosses all silos and departments. So to that point, if we have properly assessed both the opportunities and the audiences we’re focusing on, then we need to understand and plan around the internal capabilities of our colleagues on staff. If our assessment indicates that we have a wonderful opportunity for human resources to recruit talent via LinkedIn, have we trained them? Are they prepared?

Similarly, if our opportunity assessment indicates that our customers really need knowledge from our technology or scientific community, we need to build plans around how those professionals are going to manage their time (and attitudes) around becoming more customer-facing. Often, this is not going to come naturally for them. Training on how to use the tools won’t be good enough. You’re talking about training left-brained people on right-brain skills. If you don’t do this properly, you’ll be that marketing person wandering around the office wondering why no one cares.

Seems simple, right? Not so much. But please do yourself and the market a favor by stopping what you’re about to do and answer these three questions. The world doesn’t need another social presence that goes nowhere.

Hello, friends. Greetings from Gorinchem, The Netherlands! I’m writing here at the Brasserie Hotel Le Bon ‘Apart, a brand new hotel nestled along a canal . . . of course. And by “new” I mean retrofitted into a building 400 years old or more.

The Dutch know about space and architecture. In Amsterdam, in particular, you see buildings within the center city built at forward-leaning angles. It’s not an accident. Those hooks at the top of every building allowed for occupants on the top floors to hook and pulley goods from the ground to the top floors without scraping and damaging the external walls of the floors below them. Brilliant! My client here, who lives in Rotterdam, explained to me tonight that after the city was rebuilt after WWII, it was torn back down, only to embrace modern architecture to exhibit a destination of 20th-century commerce. As I screamed by on the fast train yesterday, clearly this was a good decision. It’s a city of impressive spaces any international business will find attractive.

Earlier this week, upon finding some inspiration from Steve Jobs’ biography about his design of the Pixar headquarters, I did something in reaction to something that had been bothering me for some time about my firm’s space. Recently, we acquired and redesigned quite a bit of new space. More than we needed at the time. The result was that we now all had a lot of space per person. In fact, all of us have spaces that are beautiful and grand. So, what did I do? I “banned” them. We had quickly gone from a company that was used to collaborating and intersecting with each other to a company comprising talented people now isolated from one another.

In the Jobs’ bio, he talks about how it would be impossible to create works of brilliance in an environment where people are dependent upon e-mail and iChat to communicate with one another. This insight struck a chord with me, and it was clear that our newfound office space, while comfortable, was going to kill our creative instincts. So we killed it. Our private offices are now spaces for private phone calls and for time when absolute quietude is required to get the job done.

The result? Happiness. We really enjoy each other’s company. We enjoy the efficiency of simply lifting one’s head and asking a question of a colleague, rather than setting up an hour meeting, getting schedules in place, and dealing with the hassle. We simply “move our stuff” from the bottom floor to the top floor without bringing destruction to the infrastructure of the other floors.

Who knew we were so Dutch!?

I recommend the same to your own teams. Offices, cubes, and other constrictions within corporate American stifle creativity and problem solving. If you’re a leader, walk through your offices. Do you think your best work is being done? Are your smartest people working side by side? Can they actually work together, or are you holding on to some sort of antiquated idea of what “accomplishment” is inside your pointed office? Think about it. What’s more important? The internal comfort of personal space or the result of the work you’re doing for your customers?

Greetings, dear friends and readers. First, I’d like to thank you for your comments, ideas, and critique over these past few months of the Post-Chaos blog. I enjoy writing these posts, although I’m realizing I’m getting older, and as I get older I get more grimy and curmudgeonly. Stay positive, Andrew! Jeez. I mean, really.

My frustrations in digital marketing are really human ones, not technological. Technology isn’t the problem. The problem—still—rests with humans being resistant to change in a field so wrought with change it becomes incredible to me that so many people are still employed. I mean that, quite honestly.

So, with that, I believe 2012 is the year in which lots of people and companies are going to be caught with their pants down. Here are a few ways in which that’s going to happen:

1. Mobile. HOT. HOT. HOT. Super hot. I understand there are 14 billion blogs written by people who have something to gain from the explosion in mobile. This isn’t one of them. But this is a blog that basically says one thing about mobile: There’s a good chance that your key customers are now on a smart phone and that’s how they access the Web. Problem is, your Web site doesn’t render on a smart phone screen. Do I need to go into any more detail than that? I do not. Go to your smart phone right now and bring up your Web site. Happy with what you see? Fix it. (Disclosure: My own site sucks on mobile. I’m fixing it right now.) Plus, if you’re an executive and don’t have a smart phone, get one. Flipping open your flip-phone or Blackberry in 2012 is not giving your direct reports (and maybe now your board) any additional confidence in you. Don’t be that guy (or gal). It’s showing a lack of curiosity.

2. Organizational Social Media. I read a B2B predictions blog from last year that said that social media will be pervasive throughout the organization by the end of 2011. Yikes. This is not happening. There are pockets where wide-spread, strategically driven engagement and relationship development is going on, but this is not pervasive. Many companies still don’t have a social media policy. Strike that. Most companies still don’t know what they’re actually trying to accomplish. Fix this. It’s 2012. We can’t operate companies as though our consumers have just heard about Yahoo for the first time.

3. Understanding All Customer Touchpoints. OK. I loathe jargon and “touchpoints.” I understand. The bigger word for this is “customer experience,” and I simply wonder who within an organization has truly mapped and understands how a customer really interacts with its brand, across all media, all people, and all relationships. If, for example, you claim to be “the leading company in ________,” but you have mega-lame digital presence or your people aren’t involved in online forums and social channels where real conversations are actually taking place, then you’re not. You’re simply not the leader. You may make great products but the paths you build to those products are increasingly complex. A good idea would be to fix this. Understand how your brand actually lives in the modern world.

4. The Talent Crisis. This year, those leaders and emerging leaders who truly understand just what the hell is going on are going to be rewarded. Of course, the other side of that coin is that those who don’t are going to be exposed. That goes for all of us. Agencies and consultants who claim to be “experts” but can’t deliver aren’t experts. They’re dabblers who push jargon around. I struggle with this every day at my own firm. Ask yourself every day, “Just what exactly am I trying to accomplish that has value to my shareholders, customers, and colleagues?” You need to have an answer—or many well-crafted, documented, aligned answers. If you don’t, pants down. Fix yourself first. Then fix your company.

These are just a smattering of critical needs right now in 2012. I would love your ideas as well, so please go through the trouble (ahem . . . ) of commenting below. Once again, please tell me if I’m full of it. Or if you have much better ideas, share them. We can all use the help.

Oh. And pants. Pull ‘em up.