Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Subway stations are great places for art, commissioned or otherwise. The anxieties of a bustling platform, the boredom of waiting for a delayed train, or even the drudgery of another day’s commute–all can be soothed, or at least temporarily smoothed over, by a well-placed placard with something nice to look at. Renowned artist Mark Wallinger recently finished a new collection of soon-to-be-subterranean pieces to celebrate the London Underground’s 150th anniversary, though their subject matter is somewhat at odds with the whole idea behind these modern marvels of efficiency in the first place. By the end of this summer, at every one of London’s 270 Tube stations, passengers will be able to take a few seconds to contemplate a tiny maze.

The project is part of the ongoing Art on the Underground program, and it’s the largest-ever commission of its kind. For the full set, Wallinger created 270 different labyrinths, one for every stop. The first 10 of the series are being installed this week; the rest will follow in coming months. Once they’re up, each two-foot-by-two-foot piece will be a permanent part of the station in which it’s posted.

“The journeys we take on the Underground are unique to each of us,” Wallinger said in a statement accompanying the project’s debut. “I hope Labyrinth can perhaps reflect that individual yet universal experience.” And in a sense, the maze is the perfect thing to capture that dynamic. Each will be instantly recognizable as such–like the ones you’ll find in any kids’ activity book, they’re nothing more than ordered clusters of black and white lines–though every passerby will have the opportunity to navigate the lines on their own, be it superficially, from a distance, or up-close, scrupulously following their path with a finger.

From the initial pieces, it seems like some will be easier to complete than others. The puzzle for Embankment station is a straightforward spiral to the center. The thin-lined Oxford Circus labyrinth offers a significantly greater challenge, with some potential wrong turns and dead ends thrown into the mix. But for all the pieces, the magic only exists so long as the works stay pristine. Hopefully, the city’s transportation officials have a plan for dealing with the inevitable product of the first drunken ass who happens to encounter one of these with a Sharpie.

Social media experts will tell you, and they’ll make a pretty good case too, that it is the golden key to unlocking meaningful customer relationships and the gateway to surprising and delighting them over time. So how does social media do this? Well all it takes is to listen, be part of the conversation, curate great content, run native advertisements, and oh yeah, be transparent and authentic. Done and done.

Well, wrong and wrong.

Social media isn’t going to save your business nor is it going to make it. This may sound commonsensical, but to succeed in business takes much more than a Facebook or Twitter account. Hostess baked over 400,000 likes on Facebook and yet the iconic American brand is now shut down. Even small businesses are not immune to the real world. According to the SBA, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. Social media isn’t saving those businesses either.

Michael Ames author of Small Business Management, assembled the top 8 reasons that contribute to small business failure and you’ll notice not embracing social media isn’t one of the contributors:

1. Lack of experience
2. Insufficient capital (money)
3. Poor location
4. Poor inventory management
5. Over-investment in fixed assets
6. Poor credit arrangements
7. Personal use of business funds
8. Unexpected growth

From experience, there are two other ingredients that serve as harbingers to the future of any business, under scoping or underestimating sales and marketing and underemphasizing product quality and customer experiences.

In any one of these scenarios, social media is not your saving grace—regardless of business size, number of followers, or however many viral videos you’ve introduced.

Am I saying that social media is useless?

No.

It is after all where connected consumers are spending a significant amount of time these days. Nielsen recently found that Americans spend 121 billion minutes per month in social networks, which is significantly up from 88 billion just one year ago.

I do believe that many experts are however taking their eye off of the ball in the name of social media. But, success takes design, intent, and the relentless pursuit of opportunities even when they are elusive. As a digital analyst and also an entrepreneur and investor, I’ve learned that technology is always going to introduce new channels for engagement. And, that’s a good thing. But they are not in of themselves channels for necromancy. The ability to surprise and delight customers starts with the ability to understand how to exceed expectations. And, even before that, it takes an understanding of what expectations are and where they’re met or missed.

So, here’s where social media can help.

Listening with Intent

Listening is among the most valuable ways to use social media for business relevance and ultimately success. However for it to offer true value begins with the questions you chose to answer. For example, in addition to asking, “what are people saying about me or my competitors,” also ask, “what are people saying or seeking in to improve what they’re doing today?” It’s the difference between information and insight and also listening to and hearing customers in a way that inspires innovation or iteration.

Designing the Experience

To deliver exceptional customer experiences takes experience design. You have to articulate, thoughtfully, what you want people to feel, say, and share. This is more than defining differentiators and value propositions. Businesses must think through how products and services evoke the original inspiration for starting or joining a company and the ongoing aspirations necessary to exceed expectations in the future. Social media then represents a series of open windows to engage customers during each and every moment of truth before, during and after transactions to reinforce experiences and desired sentiment. Think marketing, sales, service, support, and word of mouth.

Paying it Forward

If social media is about conversations you can bet that much of it is based on people asking questions. People are often looking for answers or direction. Rather than “Googling It,” it’s easier to ask those you trust. In this economy where trust is fleeting and transparency is elusive, there’s a tremendous opportunity to become the resource in your community. Don’t sell…instead; sell through the art of reciprocity. Customers feel a sense of appreciation for those who help and provide value.

The Power to Tell

As my good friend Peter Guber says, storytelling or Telling to Win helps people align with your mission through aspirations or solutions. Don’t sell just on price or features. Make your customers the hero by helping them see what they can accomplish simply by aligning with you. If you use social media, don’t just post questions, polls, or random pictures, unleash a gravity that pulls customers to you because they can clearly see that you “get” them and the things they struggle or hope to accomplish with or without you.

These are just a few ways to think about social media. But, there are many many other initiatives that you can consider that deliver value during each moment of truth. You have to consider though, that social media represents a series of new channels that complement other avenues that define your digital and real world opportunities. There is no one way to reach all of your customers and prospects.

Mobile.

Web.

Digital signage.

Geolocation.

Social.

And that’s what makes these times so challenging. You can’t assume however that building a distributed presence is good enough. You don’t have time for that. Growth and success are intentional, which means you can’t afford to stumble your way around them. There are customers to earn now and yes, technology is changing how you’ll reach them over time. See, the people who represent your customers 10 years from now are not the people who you reach today.

Ten years you say!?

Well, perhaps that’s too far to appreciate. The same is true though for three and four years from now.

Start with getting to know who your customers are and what they need…and how to help them. Then let it inspire you to create meaningful marketing strategies, relevant products and services, and desirable engagement channels in the moments of truth in the medium of preference.

If you don’t continually invest in the awareness of your value or experience you cannot benefit from consideration.

You are now perpetually competing for the future. Social media is one of the channels that now present you with yet another opportunity to truly engage with your customers. In the end, you have to think deeper about this opportunity. Just because you’re in business doesn’t mean you’ll stay in business. If you stop competing for attention and relevance you by default stop competing. This is your time to not just survive but thrive.

What do you think? How else can social media help businesses contribute to business success while helping foster customer and employee relationships and experiences?

Originally appeared in AT&T’s Networking Exchange Blog

Now that Pinterest is the third most visited social network in the U.S., some startups are seizing the opportunity to facilitate pinning across the web.

Case in point: WP Pinner, an all-in-one Pinterest tool for users of the blogging platform WordPress.

WP Pinner, launched Wednesday, is a plug-in built for WordPress users to share material on Pinterest. Installing WP Pinner will mount a dashboard to the blog’s admin area.

The dashboard displays the board name, date posts, clicks, likes and number of repins. From here, WordPress publishers can also schedule pins and automatically follow users interacting with their pinboards.

Creators of WP Pinner, Wilco de Kreij and Mark Ramos, based in The Netherlands, were inspired by the success of Pinterest analytics tool Pinerly.

“I noticed there weren’t any really good tools around to manage my accounts,” said de Kreij. “Since I’m doing pretty much everything with WordPress these days, an integrated tool seemed like the best fit.”

With the team’s first release of the beta, the only features available will be auto-pinning and tracking statistics.

Interested in getting WP Pinner? Enter an email address on their main page to receive an invite once the product is ready. Up to 100 Mashable readers can sign up for WP Pinner using this link to receive expedited sign-up instructions.

The team hopes to go live in a few weeks with more features, including detailed statistics, pinning and tracking non-WordPress posts and multiple account support. For now, the plug-in will only work on self-hosted WordPress websites on WordPress.org.

WordPress.com only allows plugins from the official WordPress plugin directory. Check out this video that explains what you can do with the Pinterest plug-in for WordPress:

Do you use Pinterest to share content from personal blogs or work-related websites? Tell us in the comments if you’ll use this plugin to track and analyze pin stats.

Despite the gloom surrounding its stock price of late, Apple delivered another blowout quarter on Tuesday, thanks in large part to iPhone sales. But if you took the iPhone out of the equation, the overall numbers were just OK as Macs had a so-so quarter and iPad sales fell on the low end of estimates.

Apple sold 11.8 iPads during the quarter, which was lower than the 12.3 million to 13.5 million units that analysts had been expecting. During Apple’s earnings call with analysts Tuesday afternoon, a few took the opportunity to grill Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and CEO Tim Cook on the matter. One question was whether the introduction of the $399 iPad 2 had hindered sales of the new iPad.

“We’re just learning about elasticity of demand,” Oppenheimer said. “The $399 iPad 2 is doing well, but the new iPad is on fire.”

Cook said he was “thrilled with the results we’ve seen,” since lowering the price of the iPad 2 to $399, though “it’s too early to come to a clear conclusion.” The cheaper iPad unlocked some education demand, Cook added.

Nevertheless, the numbers were a comedown from the 15.4 million sold in Apple’s fiscal first quarter, which benefitted from the holiday season. Cook and Oppenheimer didn’t offer any more reasons for the perceived shortfall. “The new iPad is on fire. We’re selling them as fast as we can make them,” Cook said. One possibility is that analysts based their estimates on the new iPad’s opening weekend, in which it sold 3 million units.

To be sure, Apple is selling a lot of the devices. Since debuting the iPad in early 2010, Apple has sold 67 million of them. As Cook noted, it took Apple three years to sell that many iPhones and 24 years to sell as many Macs.

Speaking of Macs, those sales were also on the low end of estimates and grew just 7% over the year-ago quarter. Cook said one major reason was that Q2 2011 was a big quarter for Macs. Sales grew 28% in that quarter as the rest of the PC industry posted single-digit gains.

“Yes, I think there was some cannibalization from iPad and the market is slow,” Cook said of Mac sales in the latest quarter. But the “primary factor,” he said, was those year-ago sales.