Every company wants to make social media an essential component of marketing, communications, lead generation and customer support program. If you are responsible for social media efforts at your company, this means you will be running more initiatives, tracking results more closely and involving a whole lot more people in your efforts than ever before. That is a whole lot of work heading your way.

Fortunately, we have a framework that will help you plan out everything from high level social media strategy and communication to day-to-day social media best practices. Our recommendations are based on our work with hundreds of companies and agencies.

We call this framework our Social Media Initiative Planning Guide and it breaks down social media initiatives into seven parts. Some of the topics we cover in this 28-page guide include:

• How to align social media efforts and metrics with corporate objectives
• Expanding your social media team through part-time contributors
• How to baseline your brand's presence in social media in 2 weeks
• Identifying the top content opportunities in your social networks
• Picking the right social platforms based on initiative objectives
• The top 3 social media metrics and how to track your progress
• Integrating social media activities with other channels in your communication mix