This is a summary of the lessons learned as Caterpillar Inc went through the Facebook journey

Do your research. There are a lot of companies doing social the right way so don’t be shy to look around and document what is working for them. A lot can be learned by watching others.

Clearly document your goals. As you know it is difficult to achieve anything if you don’t know what your trying to achieve so set goals for your social media sites. It could be as simple as the number of fans or followers or as complex as a certain amount of sales due to a specific campaign. We found ourselves starting very basic with our goals and getting more complex.

Have the processes in place. Initially, these sites take a lot of nurturing where you must keep the content fresh and interesting, but as time goes on the fans will contribute more and more of the content. So you must have a content strategy. There are many other processes that you need in place to answer…Does all the posts go through one person or can many people post? Who approves these post? Who replies to the post? When do you delete a post by a fan or follower? When do you respond? You must know the answers to these questions because all of these scenarios will come up.

Integrate your channels. Repost and/or repurpose content from offline channels to drive a unified and smooth customer experience across channels, ensuring that all messages are reinforcing rather that undermining each other. Also use the social media channel to get customers to your other online assets. This could be a specific campaign or piece of content.

Driving Interactivity. Customers/fans want to have fun with these sites so have fun with them by having contest, polls, applications, etc… This helps drive stickiness to your effort. Also make your site human to the outside world, and show the smarts, personality, and passion of the people behind your logo.

Responding to the customers. You must respond to the fans questions. This is no different in the customers eyes than if they were standing in line and asking a question…they are expecting a response. Nothing will degrade your effort fast than if you aren’t responding. You must develop a strategy to confront negative content, including profane user generated content.

Global accommodation. If you are a global company, you must figure out a way to deal with the many comments and suggestions that are posted in languages other that English to ensure that no customer feels like their contribution is not valued.

Consider your employees. A must have is a social media policy for your employees. This will help the employees understand the how/why/where to engage in social media. Also it is nice to have a Social Media 101 interactive training course that complements this  policy.