It probably won’t surprise you to learn that 65 international Fortune 100 companies are actively using social media to communicate with their customers. After all you can’t open a newspaper/web page without being hit by the latest Twitter story, or social media phenomenon.

The big business reaction to social media mainstreaming over the last 12 months has been rapid and predictable – look good by throwing a pot of money at the pesky conversation problem. According to a new report from Burson-Marsteller – the latest in a flurry of recent social media surveys -  65 Global 100 companies have regularly updated Twitter accounts , 54 have Facebook fan pages, 33 have a corporate blog and 50 have a YouTube channel.

Great. More noise. But do these companies know what they want to say? And do they talk among themselves to find out what their colleagues are up to before wading into social communities themselves?

Not according to the findings of Burson-Marsteller. As the authors of the report write: “We found that each of these tools is being used extensively not only by corporate headquarters but also by local market offices, various divisions of the company and for one-time corporate events. To this extent social media is providing great benefits and opportunities by helping different niches of a company reach their target audiences. But, it is also introducing challenges by creating mixed messages and tones and by leaving abandoned Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages which may be detrimental to the brand.”

Simply put, while Fortune 100 seems to understand the importance of social media engagement many of these companies lack the strategy, coordination and internal resources to build beneficial customer relationships.

Sad but true case in point? Recently our consultancy, Custom Communication was asked to advise the marketing department of a FTSE 100 company that had finally persuaded the legal department to let it start a Twitter account. Unfortunately no-one in the department knew how to use Twitter so they had co-opted their external public relations agency to write the tweets. Then they wanted their digital agency to publish the tweets because the PR company also had never used Twitter. But before the digital agency could publish anything each tweet had to be okayed by, you guessed it, legal. When the first “test” tweet was sent to legal to be vetted, the 140 character message was returned with a 100 character legal disclaimer attached!

Even when companies do greenlight social media initiatives they often fail to fully grasp the on-going, interlinked nature of online conversation and the commitment it takes to make it work.

Pity the predicament Citi finds itself in. On Feb 1 it launched its New Citi Blog (“Citi is Changing and You Can Help”) as a way to show Citi’s fresh commitment to responsible banking. Yet from the start it appeared that Citi didn’t quite know what the blog’s true mission was or how much time and resources to commit to it. Not only did the bank launch the blog with a series of polished and very unconversational corporate messages but it then neglected to post anything new for 15 days.

Since it has started posting regularly it has ignored the one truly relevant Citi conversation currently raging on blogs and Twitter – namely that Citi recently shut down the bank account of a gay social network, Fabulis (in part funded by The Big Money parent company The Washington Post Co.) because the site’s content “was not in compliance with Citibank’s standard policies.”

To its credit Citi was quick to apologize to Fabulis via Twitter and offline chanels. In addition it just announced changes to its internet business policy as a result of the controversy. But the bank still faces a social media strategic quandary. Shouldn’t it acknowledge the Fabulis furore on its New Citi blog?

Perhaps not but then isn’t New Citi the social media face of Citi’s commitment to responsible banking. And isn’t it also the place where CEO Vikram Pandit writes, “We promise we’re listening”.

In this new confusing world of multiple social media mixed messaging and brand personas, the New Citi silence on the Fabulis issue suggests the bank, along with many other companies it should be said, has still to find its social media voice.