Up to this point, if your social media program has been running on the fumes of your already over-extended marketing manager, who is operating outside of his or her comfort zone or at best, you have an eager intern or two tweeting out the occasional press release.

Hiring a dedicated social media manager is a thoughtfully considered investment. How do you plan on measuring its returns to your brand and to your organization? There are a number of outstanding tools and platforms (Radian6 and Sysomos, to name two top choices) for mining the rich and incredibly valuable brand and customer data that are generated via the social web.