A recent global survey by ITtoolbox Research asked IT professionals what are the most trusted information sources for purchasing decisions. It turns out that social media content, including blogs, wikis and online forums, came out on top; vendor web sites come next, and paid analyst research trails in third place. In addition, social media content is now the second most widely referenced source for information on products or services under consideration.

Whatever you think of Web 2.0, blogging, Facebook and other facets of the interactive web, they are having a real business impact, and I doubt that many firms appreciate the extent to which they are changing the marketing game.

I come across plenty of businesses that are anxious to improve their web presence, but all too often they are focused on Google and improving their search ranking. In most cases they would do better to forget about Google and concentrate on how well they are enabling customer interaction. This cuts both ways. Running a public discussion forum, or enabling user reviews and comments, are excellent ways of engaging customers and driving web traffic, but this can backfire if nobody from within the organisation is active in responding to comments and questions.

You can see this being played out on the Creative Labs web site, where users have gathered on the official forums to record their unhappiness with the poor performance of Creative soundcards on Windows Vista. Unfortunately, the Creative Labs presence is limited to a few valiant moderators who seem far removed from the engineers and developers who might be able to answer the questions raised. The forum has become a burden rather than an asset.

Put another way, there are two primary factors in taking advantage of social media, whether hosted on the vendor’s web site or elsewhere. The first is to encourage rather than suppress user interaction. The second, although more difficult, is for executives within the organisation to devote serious time and attention to the sites they have created.

If executives feel they are too busy to carry out such tasks, they should read and understand what surveys such as ITtoolbox’s are telling us. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief executive, speaking at the Fortune iMeme conference in San Francisco this month, said that by writing a blog entry he could reach 60,000 readers, more than would ever hear a keynote speech.

It is also worth noting that a side effect of creating web sites with plenty of fresh interactive content is almost always a higher Google ranking.