Last week I got tagged by Gavin Heaton to add my story to an evolving conversation and collection of insights on "best practices in social media." Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation kicked this meme off, and since then, a number of really smart people have contributed their take on best practices:

Consistency (Mitch Joel)

Embrace your audience (Jason Falls)

Listen and add value (Kipp Bodnar)

Listen (Chris Brogan)

Be human (Kristie Wells)

Reach out to others (Morriss Partee)

Honesty and respect (Paisano)

Watch what people actually do (Liz Strauss)

Provide a platform (Beth Harte)

Lift up others! (Drew McLellan)

Tell a story (Gavin Heaton)

Of course social media isnew, ever evolving and ever-expanding. It can be hard to wrap your head around the first time or even the fourth time. So having this collection of tips and insights is a wonderful resource for experienced practitioners and newbies alike. I learned a lot reading everyone else's ideas.

Now, here's my best practice for social media: "Invest In It."

What's the old lottery tagline, "You've got to be in it to win it?" Exactly. Actively, frequently participating—either in reading and aggregating and commenting, or being so bold as to blog or video share—is critical to understanding and reaping advantage of social media.

Invest your time. Make room in your calendar. Start with a half hour a day. But make the personal effort to understand the space, it's participants, rules, methodology and results. How else can you understand it, reference it, make recommendations about it? Don't rely on others, do the work yourself. (And it is, to some degree, work.)

I recall first getting into advertising and wanting to get involved in disciplines I had zero experience in, like TV. So I followed Stephen King's advice on becoming a professional writer, when he talks about commitment: "Either you're writing or you're reading." I wasn't making TV spots, so I sat down and watched hundreds of them, analyzed them, drew storyboards of what I saw—all the better to be prepared when I made my first spots. For you to succeed, you must be in it.

Social Media can be, like any discipline, an armchair activity; produced at a casual pace with casual results. Or it can be incredibly persuasive, effective and liberating for brands and audiences together. But the only way that's going to happen is if you—the singular, personal you (not your assistant or team)—invests in social media.

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Now I'm tagging Dion Hughes, Greg Swan, Alan Wolk and David Griner to add their insights on best practices in social media.