If you accept that your company needs to be involved in social media—as most marketers do—then it’s important to figure out where social media fits within your organization.

Tempting as it might be to compartmentalize social media, most companies find that it gets assimilated into various functional teams, including marketing and communications, sales, customer service, human resources, IT and executive management. Firms from Ford Motor Co. to Dunkin’ Donuts to Hewlett-Packard describe social media as a cross-organizational discipline that touches a wide range of functions.

Best Buy, for example, encouraged hundreds of employees to engage with customers who have questions about the company and its products through Twitter. Dubbed Twelpforce, the feed not only deals with customer service issues that arise through social media, but also functions as marketing vehicle, resulting in tweets like this:

While some businesses, like Best Buy or HP, have attempted to integrate social media across the organization, that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a dedicated social media department, or at least an individual in charge of the company’s overall social presence. This is essential, particularly at larger companies with complex structures. This person or team needs to work closely with other departments that participate in the social media effort. Promotion and customer service on Twitter is good, but disseminating information learned from Twitter across the organization to drive results is better. See this recent article from our newsletter for more on measuring ROI on social efforts.

In my recently published report, “Where Does Social Media Fit Within an Organization?,” I discuss in detail how different companies have weaved social media into the corporate fabric and demonstrated success at a variety of levels. A key takeaway:

More and more opportunities will present themselves for companies to use social channels to increase their business. The landscape will change rapidly, so tactics that might have seemed irrelevant in 2009 might be on the table in 2010 or 2011. Stay tuned as social channels evolve and be creative in how they are used within an organization.

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Great stuff here from David Armano on several trends we can expect to see from social media in the coming year. A snippet:

2. Corporations look to scale
There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. Best Buy’s Twelpforce leverages hundreds of employees who provide customer support on Twitter. The employees are managed through a custom built system that keeps track of who participates. This is a sign of things to come over the next year as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology.

I think it’s interesting that he mentions Best Buy’s Twitter efforts as their main social media play. Twelpforce is definitely a boon to their marketing program, but to me, it’s more of a customer service initiative. Best Buy’s really interesting social media program is their Facebook page.

Essentially, they’ve set up a virtual storefront — customers can search for products, ask friends to review it before they buy, or go directly to a purchasing page on Best Buy’s website. It’s targeted, it’s instant word-of-mouth, and now, it could be legitimately driving purchases. Analyst Jeffrey Grau recently spoke with Best Buy’s Senior Director of Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media, Tracy Benson, about the Facebook commerce site.

What you can’t do today is execute the cart in Facebook. So in our next integration later this year, you’ll actually be able to purchase in the cart through Remix. You’re essentially launching a commerce application in the background that really is pulling from BestBuy.com, but you don’t actually have to leave Facebook to go to BestBuy.com to purchase.

This goes way past the customer service efforts of Twelpforce — now we’re talking sales, revenue generated straight from a social media presence.

Most brands are finally starting to catch on that consumers want them to interact on the social web, and we’re seeing more companies dip their toes in the water. (See these case studies.) But beyond the community building, “let’s have a conversation with our customers” mantra of many a new media marketer, I think many brands may be missing out on the real potential to earn revenues on social platforms, at least, except for Best Buy.

We’ll see how it pans out. Happy 2010.