That’s the main take-away from a September 19 Social Media Week Chicago session, “When Integrated Marketing Met Social: Love at First Like,” held at the Tribune Tower.

Brad Keown of Facebook leads off the session by discussing how brands are using Facebook. He asserts that many marketers are not using Facebook the right way. All they’re doing is adding a “Like” button to their websites, or collecting Facebook fans without interacting with them in any meaningful way.

Marketers can and should do a lot more. For instance, Facebook is now the Number 1 photo site on the web because of its tagging functionality. Are brands taking advantage of the rich photo sharing functionality?

American Express is an example of a company that is using Facebook effectively, according to Brad.

In 2010, American Express launched Small Business Saturday by American Express, which relies heavily on Facebook to allow small-to-medium-sized merchants to connect with consumers in meaningful ways. The launch yielded strong returns for businesses participating. And with the “Link, Like, Love” Facebook program, consumers can use Facebook to receive more relevant content from American Express.

He espouses the principle of “Social by Design” to get the most out of Facebook. To wit:

• Build from the ground up. When you write the creative brief for the launch of a new marketing product or service, ask, “Why would people share my content?”

• Put people at the center – an example being Intel’s Museum of Me.

• Lay the social plumbing. For instance, Trip Advisor does a good job embedding social plug-ins into its owned media content. Levi’s effectively uses social plug-ins as well.

• Make the experience easy.

Charlie Lee and Regina Gray of Experian then ask, “How to make social media marketing great?”

In their words, “2010 was the year of the follow.” Many brands were obsessed with gaining fans, and for good reason: one Facebook fan translates to 20 additional visits to your website. Winning companies need to integrate social with their mainstream marketing and create relationships with consumers.

For instance, MarketingProfs and Redbox both do an effective job on their websites integrating social likes with calls to action such as email signup. Urban Outfitters prominently displays on its website a bold invitation to Like its page and to sign up for an email subscription.

Dick’s Sporting Goods also created back-to-school scavenger hunt that integrates social with mobile. Meantime, home furnishing provider Horchow does a good job embedding customer reviews from Facebook in its email marketing.

Charlie and Regina assert that brands must also do a better job relying on the data they receive from their social interactions with consumers to better understand the marketplace – and the tools exist now to make that kind of social monitoring an everyday reality.

Social also provides an enormous opportunity to improve customer attribution by helping marketers understand the value and influence of social conversations on consumer behavior.

Charlie and Regina also urge brands to create a real-time view of your customers by linking your website, social data, and existing customer records.

To really take social to the next level, brands must more aggressively make use of Facebook Connect, which is really a portal into the world of your customer – one that gives you a more rich view of your customer.

Amazon uses information you provide about your social graph (via Facebook Connect) to make smarter product recommendations – such as birthday gifts you might want to purchase for your friends.

Companies that integrate social data with their offline marketing will take integrated marketing and social to the next level of performance.

It’s easy to want to compare Google+ to Facebook, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to do so. While both services are about connecting with friends and sharing content, that’s really where the similarities end.

Just like we all jumped ship from MySpace to Facebook, Google wants to be the next big thing. Maybe it’s too early to make the call, but I just don’t see it. Make no mistake: Google+ will fare far better than Buzz and the now-defunct Wave, but a mass exodus from Facebook is unlikely.

Facebook’s familiar. There’s a wall. You can chat or message or poke. You can create lists to share certain things with certain people. It’s going to take a while to get used to Google’s system of Circles and Sparks and Hangouts.

Give Google+ points for Hangouts, which is a group video chat for up to 10 people. Facebook just announced video chatting by partnering with Skype, so that battle might be a fairer fight.

How can I put this kindly? Facebook is like Wal-Mart or Denny’s—you know what to expect when you walk in. Google+ is like that fancy restaurant with limited reservations available. The food underwhelms and you aren’t in a hurry to go back, but you might reconsider after the kitchen works out some of the kinks.

One thing Google+ has going for it is the popularly of Gmail. Once Google+ opens to everyone, the link between its email system and Google+ should be seamless. It’ll need to be in order to stand a chance.

So, what does Google+ need to do to survive in the social media universe of 2011 and beyond?

First, Google needs to figure out how to get people signed up. It’s way too confusing right now. Keep it simple and send out invites rather than making it a nasty free-for-all.

Second, keep the design simple. So far, so good.

Third, and something worth strongly considering before a wider launch: Change the name. Facebook sounds social. Google+ sounds like a calculator.

Despite my assessment, I’m not giving up on Google+. If you can get in, you should give it a try. And please add me to one or more of your circles—I’ll add you back.

Original version at RedEye.com.