Emily Riley, a senior analyst with Forrester Consulting, tried to wake up marketers to the somewhat deceptive urgency of social marketing: “Right now, social media (users) really don’t care about us perhaps with the exception of Apple or Adidas. Their sites are about lifestyle. That’s their focus.

“We’re still in the early days of this new medium. We’re all still collecting ideas. But it’s absolutely clear that it won’t be long before social networking sites become the new portals. And that means that marketers must start experimenting with it today.”

Those trials need not necessarily translate into money spent on branding, she said.