Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Gravity Summit Conference in Los Angeles on the topic, “Tips for Engaging Audience and Staff in Social Media”. Not surprisingly, most of the tips that I shared were based on our experiences here at USA TODAY.

For those of you who were unable to attend, the brief 13-slide deck touches on the following areas:

• The value of social media for your organization.
• Examples of Facebook Fan Page features.
• Types of tweets that we publish across our 100+ Twitter feeds.
• Steps we took to sell internal staff on Twitter.
• Ways in which to engage with your audience.
• Social media enhancements to on-site content.
• Key questions to address as you flesh out your social media plan.

Attached is a copy of the presentation, Gravity Summit Conference – USATODAY – 22-Feb-10. Admittedly, some of these slides work better with a verbal description, but most are pretty self-explanatory.

Ultimately, success in social media boils down to maximizing your ROIII — interaction, influence, and investment. Engagement with the first two will lead to increases in traditional ROI. Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak, offered up a fourth ‘I’ to this equation – the return on ignoring. Engage, listen, participate, learn, and share, but don’t ignore when it comes to social media!

This post was published by Brian Dresher, @bdresher.