My colleague Sarah Takvorian attended the New England Direct Marketing Association’s (NEDMA) spring Marketing Technology Summit in Boston. Here are the lessons learned in Sarah’s words: 

• Create socially enabled marketing campaigns. In his keynote address, Harry Gold, CEO of Boston’s digital marketing firm Overdrive Interactive, reminded us that you don’t need a million Facebook fans (in fact, most companies will never reach that number). To capitalize on the fans you do have, and in turn extend your reach to the people who orbit those fans, you need to integrate social media into your broader marketing mix, working across channels and allowing their successes to play off of and feed into one another and then measuring the results, of course. 
• Add clear calls to action. Prominently display “Like” or “Share” buttons in your emails or on your site’s most interesting, share-worthy content (perhaps a compelling graphic, article, or product). When someone presses Like on your site, they might not be a Facebook fan, but their action will still feed back into their Facebook newsfeed, thereby allowing you to tap into their network of friends and boosting your brand’s social presence. For example, Levi’s increased its Facebook traffic by 40% when it invited users to “like” content on its Website. 
• Use search to bridge digital channels. Incorporating search tactics can help you realize success in social, underscoring yet another important realm in which two channels are overlapping more and more and informing one another’s strategies. Lodge content into various places on the Web, add a social media sharing button, and then people will be able to find it long term via search. Google+, for example, is starting to socialize search and index social content.