Greed may ultimately not be good, but failure might be. In Failures and Success, Chris Brogan observes that failure is good because it creates opportunity. He writes: “The key part of failure is learning and adapting and moving on.”

So, taking a cue from Chris, how do we learn, adapt, and move on from failure when it comes to social media strategies and tactics?

Learn

Social media monitoring tools give us an “in” with the customer that we’ve never had before. Do they loathe the Facebook contest form that throws out error messages like a candy machine? Are they frustrated that brand reps don’t answer customer tweets? That customer insight is invaluable when you need to learn why a social media campaign failed.

Adapt

Listening tools are just lovely, but all that online intelligence is worthless if we don’t do anything with it. Enter expert human analysis. By combining good ol’ fashioned business acumen with the latest technology, you can make the adjustments that will take you one step further toward social media success.

Move On

It’s so easy to squash social media endeavors when a particular campaign doesn’t generate, for example, an instant Twitter army. Ignore the impulse to give up. Take what you’ve learned, make the necessary adaptations, and move onward—and upward!