Social media promotion is fast becoming one of the most effective ways to improve sales and connect with customers.  Using online services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg, companies are able to create buzz, boost customer traffic to their main corporate websites, generate leads for new customers, and build brand awareness.  All of this increases the return on the investment enterprises have made in their IT staffing and infrastructure, but many companies look at the new world of social media and wonder exactly where to begin the process of social media optimization (SMO) and social media marketing (SMM).

Not every enterprise, after all, already possesses an IT services and support staff thoroughly conversant in the ways these web-based platforms can function as business tools.

Fortunately, a solution exists in the form of IT consultants who can come on board an enterprise for the short or long term.  If they assist for only a short time, their role will be to teach existing IT personnel how to establish a corporate social media presence and leverage it to increase profitability.  This is a good solution for some enterprises, but in others, current IT staffs already are already completely booked seeing to in-house software and hardware needs.

In this case, it may be better to contract with IT consultants for the long term so they can directly manage an enterprise’s social media presence within the parameters given to them by upper management.  This process will involve a dialogue between the consultants and enterprise management, leading to increased understanding of SMM and SMO on the part of the enterprise.