Social media is all about marketing, right? Wrong. Marketing has been advancing the role of social media in business quite actively for some time, and are likely to have evolved social media use and experimentation ahead of the other lines of business. However, best practice often reveals that the most successful marketing programs offer a blended approach of traditional and social media driven programs. To strike the right balance in a social strategy informed by marketing, consider the following questions as part of the due diligence process:

1. What stage of social media use is marketing using now? Are they in the experimental stage, blending traditional and social strategy into their marketing operations, or using social media as a primary marketing channel?
2. Can marketing create a cost/benefit analysis of their social media efforts to date?
3. Is marketing leadership within your organization in sync with the staff perceptions about social media uses for marketing?
4. Does marketing have a balanced portfolio of both listening tools and proactive programs to ensure efforts are aligned with outcomes using social media?
5. Do all the marketing programs and initiatives that use social media have clearly defined business goals to support each program? Is performance against those goals measured consistently?

What questions would you add to this list? Your comments, suggestions and examples will be most welcome.

Thank you for reading Building Online Communities for Business by Leader Networks. We are a research and strategy consulting company that helps organizations succeed in social business and B2B online community building. Visit us on the web at http://www.leadernetworks.com. Connect with us on Twitter http://twitter.com/vdimauro Call us at 617 484 0778