Recently, Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer tagged Kipp Bodnar of Digital Capitalism and me to add on to Mitch Joel’s (Twist Image) meme on Best Practices in Social Media Marketing.

This is a great project to collect what is just the start of some best practices. And I say a start because some of us are still new to learning about social media and implementing social media marketing. That said there have been a lot of successes and that’s the best part of being involved in social media—we all learn from one another.

Here are just a few best practices that have been shared so far:

• Consistency (Mitch Joel)
• Embrace your Audience (Jason Falls)
• Listen and Add Value (Kipp Bodnar)
• Listen (Chris Brogan)
• Be Human (Kristie Wells)
• Reach out to others (Morriss Partee)
• Lift up others! (Drew McLellan)
• Honesty & Respect (Paisano)

The best practice that I would like to add is: Provide a Platform

Marketers are so accustomed to ‘talking at’ their customers instead of ‘talking with’ their customers. And typically when two-way conversation occurs, it happens infrequently at events, tradeshows, off-line forums, customer council meetings or during that once a year customer satisfaction survey.

Why wait for those limited occasions? Why not provide an on-line platform for your community that gives them a place to express themselves, interact and engage? (Remember the rule: two ears, one mouth).

Providing a platform could mean starting a blog or a new on-line community, but not necessarily. There are a lot of other great ways to provide a platform and you can always join one that exists.

Here are just a few:

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Ning (Social Networks)
• Forums
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• MySpace
• FriendFeed
• Second Life
• Interactive Webinars
• Blog

I am sure there are more ways to provide a platform. What would you suggest?

Once you have selected the platform that works best for your community, be sure to follow the above best practices! In the meantime, Chris Brogan offers some great advice for getting involved in social networking.

If they haven’t already been tagged, I’d like to invite Amber Naslund of The Brand Box and Paul Chaney of Conversational Media Marketing to add one of their best practices.

[Photo: iStock]

A few weeks ago Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer suggested in a post that social media is the responsibility of public relations. My visceral reaction to that notion required an immediate comment [note: I am a PR practitioner as well]. And it didn’t end there; I spent the entire weekend thinking about the post. Come the following Monday, I went back for another comment to strengthen my position on why social media is the responsibility of marketing. In doing so, I noticed that Brian Solis of PR 2.0 posted a comment: “Truth is that Social Media is the responsibility of the champions that demonstrate how it will benefit the company and the brand.” Interesting.

In the spirit of debate, I then posted this topic on Plurk to see what the smart folks there had to say. Frank Martin of Marketing Magic plurked: “this debate is so old school it misses the point of New Media, which will cut across all aspects of companies: Marketing, PR, Customer Service. We need NOT to put it in a little box of yesteryear’s definition!”

In reading Frank’s comment [and others] I realized that I was indeed stuck in a “marketing box” and looking at social media through a cracked lid.

After some consideration, I’d suggest that social media is the responsibility of the revenue generators. How so?

• Customer Service/Technical Support provides support for purchased products/services
• Finance/Accounting collects payment for the product/service
• Sales sells the product/service
• Marketing Communications/Public Relations publicizes the product/service
• Operations/Manufacturing delivers/builds the product/service
• Engineering/R&D designs/tests the product/service
• Marketing develops the product/service
• Human Resources hires the people that develop, design/test, deliver/build, publicize, sell, collect payment and support the product/service

Before becoming a social media champion consider becoming, if you’re not already, a brand champion first. Doing so just might create the brand pride necessary to get employees to understand, embrace and champion social media initiatives.

• explaining that the value of a brand—first & foremost―comes from the inside-out and bottom-up
• embracing that the brand is a living, changing thing—it can’t be controlled
• understanding that all brand experiences affect revenue—positively & negatively
• respecting that a brand is owned in part by the prospect or customer

Are you stuck in a box? Do you think brand champions will help social media efforts? What other steps would you recommend?

[Photo: rustiman]