There are a couple of important reasons why social is important for brands:
* people, collectively and one on one, have all sorts of conversations, public, internal, private. Part of those conversations is the fact that they buy based on beliefs -- yours. Do they connect with theirs?
* a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. It's individual, and it's based on emotions and not driven by your messages.
* more and more people are online. You can discover what they do there, depending on who your customers are.
Here are some ideas of how you can think through developing, implementing, managing and measuring a social media program.