I’ve had the pleasure of working with Dave Evans on three books now; first as an editor on Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, then as a supporting author on Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement, and now writing the introduction to this newest book by Dave and coauthor Joe Cothrel. It’s been a fascinating journey over the last five years as we’ve all watched this social media thing turn from a small line item to a major component of marketing budgets. And customer care budgets. And product innovation budgets. And human resources budgets. The world has embraced social media, and most brands are struggling to keep up.

The steady evolution and adoption of social technology in business—whether by small, local businessess or large, incredibly complex enterprises—is undeniable. Consumers the world over are looking to each other to validate the promises of marketing and to make the smart choices that enable them to live their lives with a high degree of, call it consumption satisfaction, and all the while doing so on a budget that works for them.

This evolution has been massive and rapid, causing most companies to struggle, in some way, to keep up. Just about the time that brands feel like they’ve reached a comfortable spot with social, there’s something new to challenge them. And the biggest issue we face today is scale.

No longer is it acceptable to simply have a few social tools in place or to have some minor level of engagement in social channels. Customer expectations have changed in a significant way, and these changes apply to all the brands they do business with, large or small. Customers are constantly asking themselves, “If my local mom-and-pop business can reply to my tweets, why can’t a major business with thousands of customer service reps do the same?” And in turn, they are asking, “If a major brand with tons of overhead and structure can figure out how to engage me directly on Facebook, why can’t the small business around the corner do the same?”

Any small-business owner, any brand employee, understands the complexity inherent in either of these questions, of course. Social technology enables conversation and engagement opportunities like no other time in business history. But as my dad has always said, “There’s no greater burden than a golden opportunity.”

How we think about scale, how we adjust our processes, and how we crack the code on engaging customers where they are, when they want, and how they want will be the way we succeed in the coming years. Customer expectations have changed, whether we see it or accept it. We all must look at how to challenge ourselves and our colleagues to scale our social channel, social technology, and social engagement efforts to become what my company calls a fully engaged enterprise.

The biggest challenge we all face in our journey to the fully engaged enterprise is that we are fighting an inherent business culture bias: optimization. As organizations scale, there’s a need and a pull toward depersonalization. We all struggle with the cultural and historical desire to restrict personal connection with customers because it seems expensive, risky, or unscalable. The truth is, however, personal connection and an understanding that we are in a new market environment require us to figure out how to best address these concerns without letting them hinder or restrict us from staying competitive. We can, and must, find ways to meet the growing customer expectations of engagement and connection in ways that can scale. And that scale is certainly going to come from a better collaboration across the organization. It will come from better advanced strategic planning. It will come from abetter understanding of and a constant engagement with your customers.

Dave Evans and Joe Cothrel are two of my favorite social media practitioners and all-around great guys. I’m excited that they are continuing the long, always-unfinished effort to help you and the larger business world understand this crazy thing called “social.”