The best ideas in social media usage for businesses have little hope of being successful if there isn't buy in from the leaders of that organization. Over at JeffBullas.com, he takes a look at the CEO and Social Media. There are numerous ways a CEO and their organization can benefit from social media, but that can only happen if they get behind the efforts:

The reality is that the CEO has to be behind any project for it to be provided the resources and commitment for it to ultimately succeed. For your social media marketing to be successful the first and most important step is the support and backing by the CEO.

Though social media has the potential to be an extremely powerful set of tools for businesses, getting buy in to those efforts is essential to realizing the success they are seeking. Simply put, at a business you can't do it alone. Social media requires experimentation and the occasional failure, not in terms of a disaster, but in learning how you can achieve better results next time.