At Work at Play, we get an almost constant stream of questions regarding social media technologies and social media marketing. I've dug back through a vast array of emails and pulled out many questions we've received to summarize here for you.

1) Can social media technologies genuinely help my business?

Certainly. That part has been proven. The web is flaunt with both stories of social media success and failure. Let's face it: Marketers and sales organizations are facing a brave new world: The economy is getting rocked, our precious consumer is demanding lower and lower costs, our customer is increasingly informed & in control, and traditional media channels like newspapers and TV had been completely disrupted. Social technologies can help you create deeper relationships with customers, create new brand engagement opportunities, and facilitate sales by "helping" people through the traditional marketing funnel. (It can also help your employee productivity, or harm it)

2) What are the most valuable social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)?

What tools are most valuable will completely depend on your audience, your objectives, your strategy and your product or service. For example, if you are marketing or selling ball bearings, a blog is going to be much more effective than a Twitter account, Viral video or a Facebook application. Why you ask? People don't (typically) socialize around ball bearings, but they do look (i.e. search) for knowledge about which ones perform best, what to look out for when buying, etc. We personally utilize a variant of the POST method, made famous by the book Groundswell

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3) How much does a social media marketing campaign cost? What's the return on investment?

In truth, it can be as cheap as a well thought out viral video, or as expensive as one can dream. The importance is to make a business case around a social media campaign. What is the investment going to be? What will be the return? What will the payback period be? e.g. 2 people + $5,000 (investment) should result in 30,000 new leads (return) within 3 months (payback period) As you can see, ROI doesn't need to directly tie to revenue. It should however tie directly to objectives. For example, take some metrics provided by Chris Brogan: Customer Satisfaction Index, Products Sold, New Signups or Subscriptions, Actions Taken, etc.

4) Who has time to manage all of these tools on top of their "regular" duties? Can we just hire someone to do all of this?

This is something we hear constantly. Unless you are a small company with lots of motivated savvy professionals, you will likely need to charge someone with these responsibilities (to have a "throat to choke") You really only need one dedicated person. However, you do need the support of the entire organization. Crocs (the shoes) only has on single guy, just salary, no budget. There are mixed feelings out there about whether hiring ghost writers is seen as inauthentic and non-transparent (violating two social media best practices). However, we believe that if your choice is between no social media presence and hiring ghost writers - then go ahead and hire ghost writers. Presence is better than no presence.

5) My organization has several different departments all with their own social media initiatives. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

We've seen quite a bit that different departments will independently go out and create their own social media campaigns and tests. The result of this, is a mixed-bag of marketing attempts with potentially conflicting messaging. A collaborative and consistent effort, sponsored by your organizations top dogs, is best.

6) How can one stay on top of the latest tools and trends -- should I keep signing up for everything?

Definitely not. This goes back to the best practice of knowing where your audience is, and what they are talking about online. Don't pay attention to places your customers aren't. Listen. Monitor these new channels. When you notice a tipping point of activity on any tool for your demographic, see if using it can enable you to achieve your social media objectives.

7) I discovered a negative comment written about my company that has no basis. What is the best way to correct the publisher or commenter?

First of all, don't freak out. Breathe. Count to 10. Respond in a professional, transparent and authentic way, politely correct the facts or misinterpretations and link to the correct information. People who love to slash and bash your brand are potentially your biggest opportunity. These people usually don't have the correct facts, and they are not fully understanding the situation. Give them the correct facts (in a professional tone), and you may just turn them into a fan.

8) What are some free social media monitoring tools?

Utilize Google Alerts, Social Mention, Boardreader, and Social Media Firehose on Yahoo Pipes. There is a great post over at vator.tv about how to create your own netvibes monitoring portal for free.

9) How seriously do people take Facebook / Twitter?

Well, based on the numbers, very seriously. The lower you go with age, the more seriously people take it. Twitter was mentioned 24 times on CNBC today and Oprah is now on Twitter. In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited twitter.com. That represents a 55% month-over-month growth. It also doesn't count API usage, which is the majority of Twitter use. Facebook is at 57.4 million uniques per month. Don't forget MySpace either, it still has 70 million uniques per month (and profitable). SalesForce just integrated Twitter into its Service Cloud, which also supports Facebook. If this isn't validation that it is critical to sales and customer support, then I don't know what is. One thing to keep in mind: These sites are still dwarfed by search engine volume. SEO and SEM are still critical components to any internet marketing campaign.

10) Are large companies learning to master social media to regain control of their brands, or is the time for that long past?

"Control of their brands" is a misleading statement. Have companies or products ever really had "control" of their brands, or just greater influence? A brand is nothing more than the personification of a company or product and the emotion people feel towards it. Branding, as a discipline, is nothing more than trying to influence these feelings towards a product, company or service. You can do commercials, print ads and such, which create and enforce your brand, but certainty "control" is an outdated term for branding.

And there you have it. My top 10 questions for Social Media Marketing

Did I miss any you would appreciate an answer for? Ask away and ye shall receive.