It’s almost a given that social media is used by the majority of consumers. If you don’t believe me, just last week a Hitwise survey declared “Social Media now officially more popular than porn”. In addition, online sales went up in August by 16% in spite of the recession.

Getting ’social’ with customers is incredibly effective in generating brand empathy, way beyond search and banner campaigns. It may be Bebo, for targeting mid to late teens, MySpace if entertainment or even clothing is your game, or Twitter if you’re after key influencers, or you may even be looking to build your own community.

A great web experience is important, but people buy from people, so digital social spaces are great places to build advocacy for your brand that can often overcome other weaknesses be they in product, price, usability or service, and is otherwise incredibly difficult to do, especially if you’re a pure online business.

With so much choice online, a bad experience can turn a customer into a disrupter with a wide reach, but with the right engagement through social media, previously neutral customers can become your biggest ambassadors.

So, how do you plan for this and balance neatly between Spam and Silence?

Here are the DO NOTS:

1. Do nothing – people will assume you simply have no idea what you’re doing, or else they will think you simply don’t care enough.
2. Push Push Push – social spaces aren’t TV airtime. Retailers who only ‘talk shop’ can be seen as insensitive and out of touch.
3. Defend & Answer – don’t _only_ get involved when there’s a problem. If you’re constantly defending, the perception is that you have a lot of problems.

Although there is no absolute ‘best practice’ there are some steps good social media retailers typically go through to get to genuine social engagement:

1. Listen: Do this first, and above all else. Who is talking about you and what you care about, and where are they doing it? What is the nature of their communication and how you can get involved in a way that interests them or entertains. This is _social_ media after all. And obviously check out your competition…
2. Dip in a toe or two: Don’t wait to define a policy everyone in the business agrees on; you’ll do nothing. Take someone trusted – this might be you – and let them start to gently participate. Lerna what makes for an appropriate level of participation, and what your brand tone of voice is.
3. Ramp up: One person in marketing cannot deal effectively with outbound community building and a host of customer service issues. Start building a network of people you trust to participate, so as you evolve a loose framework for participation, you can spread the load around the business.
4. Trust & Reward: Trust the voice of your network and reward them. Not only free stuff, but by making them feel involved, giving them ‘inside info’ or access to people they wouldn’t normally be able to.
5. Improve: There is no single template for how to do this well, so experiment with what works and what doesn’t. So measurement is then critical to feed the innovation loop.

Finally – good luck. ‘d’ me sometime if you want some encouragement!