LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Upcoming: a year ago these were novel web sites that every organization needed to know about. Today they are powerful web communications allies that every organization should be using. Forum One's recently completed Online Community Summit focused extensively on these (and other) social media properties, reflecting their recent rise.

As organizations ponder these influential sites, they confront an immediate set of questions:

• Which sites should we participate with?
• How do we staff efforts?
• How do we monitor success?
• Do we lose control of content or brand?
• How do we experiment without causing problems?
• What are key pitfalls if we use these sites?
• What are pitfalls if we neglect these sites?

In acknowledgement of these questions, organizations from large to small should assemble their social media strategies for 2008. At the very least these strategies should prioritize sites to monitor and potentially engage with, with associated staff allocations and metrics systems updates. Extra credit for groups that recognize real opportunities, for example:

• Wikipedia's updated and extensive editing policies, and how organizations can most productively interact with this hugely influential site;
• Facebook's new open APIs, allowing organizations to tailor Facebook offerings to their needs;
• YouTube's new, free, "nonprofit channel" which provides longer clip lengths, internal publicity, associated fundraising, and other advantages.

Social media management will quickly grow into a big deal for all organizations. We'll soon see job openings for "Social Media Managers", probably followed in a year or so by "Director of Social Media", "VP - Social Media", or even "Chief Social Media Officer". The days of worrying about only your own web site ended in 2007.