Social Media - what's the verdict?

Ah social media....everybody's talking about it, every company knows it needs to be in the social media sphere, but how do you approach it to make the most of it from a marketing point of view?
Well this is one the issues I'm facing right now thanks to budget cuts and limited resources!
Even though I've been working in online marketing for 7 years now, social media is still something I have to learn about as it changes every day, and the need for SMO (social media optimisation) is becoming critical to improve search engine rankings and customer interaction.
So where to start?

• I guess the first thing you need to do is be organised and have clear objectives.
• Tracking / reporting: decide on how you're going to measure you social media effectiveness and manage your online reputation (ORM - online reputation management)
• Start with the basics: get involved in relevant blogs and forums for your business as they could be a good source of leads and will allow customers to interact with you
• Create a Twitter (www.twitter.com) account only if you have resources to dedicate to it. The whole point of social marketing is responsiveness, so if you don't have the resources, don't do it. Microblogging is great but time consuming
  
• Target social networking sites if you have resources: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace. Make sure you choose the right ones based on your target audience
  
• Create content/articles for syndication and link baiting - make sure that what you offer/talk about is interesting and link worthy. utlimately, you want to establish yourself as an authority in your field
• Social bookmarking: target social bookmarking sites like digg, delicious, stumble upon to broadcast your content/news/posts as widely as possible. an RSS feed can help here.
• If you have budget, widgets can also be helpful, without forgetting viral marketing campaigns
  
• Above all, keep control of what is happening and integrate your social media strategy within your overall online marketing strategy to get results
  

I know i'm probably missing a lot of things here, but this is just a start and I'll keep posting as I go along. Thankfully, my colleague Rochelle (www.rochelledancel.com) will be at hand to help me so hopefully I'll be able to come back with a good recipe for a perfect social media strategy!