The big challenge for companies isn’t finding advice. But quantifying its value, and knowing when a social-media effort is working—that’s a different story.

One way to measure success is by the number of contacts that bring in real dollars, Garritson says. Business leads “are a trackable, quantifiable, and tangible result.”

Seattle-based Meteor Technologies assesses the amount and value of word-of-mouth traffic that social-media campaigns have brought to clients by analyzing figures from their sites. CEO Ben Straley found that word-of-mouth advertising drives 20 percent of unique users. “And data has proven that traffic driven by word of mouth converts at a rate that’s up to four times greater than visitors from online ads and other sources,” he says.

High-traffic sites are not necessarily the ones bringing in the most visitors, Meteor data shows. “The lion’s share of activity comes from people you know sending you links—whether via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.—and you clicking on those links because you trust them,” explains Straley.

In fact, one advantage to using social media is that it can help companies build trust, an invaluable commodity. Consider the JetBlue example. “We know that businesses can’t get it right 100 percent of the time,” Wengroff says. “The key is to acknowledge what errors your company made, address them, and offer solutions.”

To be effective in responses, Elizabeth Robinson, president, founder, and CEO of Volume Public Relations in Denver, stresses the need for companies to track what’s being said about them in real time. With the advent of social media, “customers have a huge influence on your brand, and it can be staggering to see how quickly not knowing what’s out there can significantly harm your company.”

“Companies should focus on really understanding what conversations are happening and how they can participate in a meaningful way,” concurs Chris Carfi, CEO and co-founder of Cerado, a software firm in San Francisco that also teaches businesses about social media from the customer’s point of view.

Carfi singles out Dell as a company that has gotten social media right after some initial struggles. After seeing more than 1.2 million posts about its bad service and landing on some bloggers’ “worst” lists, the computermaker finally reached out to customers. The change didn’t happen overnight, but having company executives go online directly to face the criticism set Dell on the road to recovery. And while customers complain online, Dell is no longer seen as “evil.”

Tuning in is a lesson Wright learned early on. At first, she was surprised at the reaction to her Twitter post. “When I look back at it I think, What a lucky hit, and Wow, that was easy,” she says. “If you get to the right person, you have no idea how much you can benefit from it.”