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Increasingly this is the question top communications executives are asking as they look to coordinate and get value from the myriad social media ideas being generated both in house and being pitched to them by competing PR and creative agencies.

Should social media be treated as another channel of digital marketing? Can it be designated another relationship building exercise for the PR team? And how on earth can you justify this still experimental form of communication to an executive board focused on the bottom line?

We've spent the last six months talking with the top communications makers at companies as diverse as PepsiCo, Kimberly Clark, Starbucks, Best Buy and Dell. We chose these companies because they are implementing social media thinking in an innovative and authoritative manner. What emerged from those conversations was a fascinating and fairly consistent approach to successful social media engagement that we would characterise in this way:

• Get executive level buy-in before you start a social media strategy
• Be realistic and consistent in how you measure success
• Integrate what you learn from social media throughout your entire business to make your company better.

The more we researched how these companies were approaching social media the more we realised this wasn't a strategy at all. Rather, the top management at all these companies had come to embrace social media as a philosophy that they saw as crucial if they were to remain relevant in a fast-changing online world. As Best Buy's social media manager John Bernier puts it: 'The company that operates in five years time as they did five years ago won't be in business.'

Take Dell. Sure it recorded $6.5 million in sales through Twitter but the lasting value for the company comes from the savings in customer service and crucial insights for future R&D that it gleans from social media engagement. And what about PepsiCo? Here's a global behemoth that has jettisoned a traditional campaign mentality for social media interaction with both a marketing and CSR focus. Then there's Starbucks. As it's digital director Alexandra Wheeler explains: 'For us social media is not marketing or PR it's a relationship with customers. Today, social media is woven into the DNA of our company.'

Understanding how companies are integrating social media to foster better relationships with their customers and their employees is the goal of Social Media Influence. That's why we've dedicated our upcoming conference to exploring what make a social company and why we're delighted to have B. Bonin Bough, head of social media for PepsiCo; Adam Brown, head of interactive marketing for Dell; Alex Balfour, head of new media for London2012; and Starbucks' Alexandra Wheeler all sharing their experiences on how their companies embraced social media as a philosophy for better communication and business.

For more information visit: http://socialmediainfluence.com/conference2010/index.html

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