If you decide to adopt Twitter as one of your social media sites, be sure to engage others on the site at least three or four times per week. And if you can deliver interesting content, you can ask others to send it along to their online contacts for a viral marketing campaign with “net-roots” credibility.

Once you’ve decided what to say and where to engage online, appoint your own online media maven (and here in the practical Midwest, that California villa is strictly optional). This person should be an existing trusted employee, mostly likely, someone in your marketing or communications area. He or she should be a part-time taskmaster and content checker, and your most enthusiastic online proponent.

To keep the job from engulfing your leader, identify other employees who can help blog, tweet and manage your Facebook and LinkedIn groups. (Use tools like Twitterfeed, Hootsuite and Splitweet when you have multiple content providers.) By spreading the work, you’ll keep the updates manageable for everyone.