Despite all the buzz surrounding social media marketing, its promise to better enable conversations between businesses and their customers, a recent essay in the Harvard Business Review by Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff point to research that suggests that maybe your customers really aren't that interested in talking to you after all.

"Have you ever walked into an airport, seen that there is nobody in line at the check-in counter, but still made a bee-line for the self-service kiosk?" the authors ask. "Better yet, have you ever waited in line for an ATM machine even though there is nobody in line for the teller inside the bank?"