Did you know that Starbucks is the only business-related page on facebook’s Top 10 Liked Pages list? We all love Starbucks coffee, but this praiseworthy status really is fitting to their interactive social media campaigns and outreach as a consumer business.

Starbucks utilizes social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, the Starbucks blog and even their website to interact with their customers. For instance, asking customers to post “My Starbucks Idea” on their blog is an interactive way to learn how to improve customer service and experience; or posting daily coffee buzz on Twitter and facebook allows Starbucks to develop a fan-base that can be useful for future outreach and programs.

While attending and participating in the annual eMarketing Associations’s Power of eMarketing Conference in San Francisco, it became evident that Starbucks is an ideal example of how to use social media to your company’s advantage. Social media is a constant two-way communication between a company and its customers, so it will take time and effort to keep up with it. One of the digital and social media panelists at the conference suggested that a company just starting out on the social media trend should choose three of four social media platforms to launch into and actively manage them by using employee voices, interactive contests and customer participation.

Keep in mind, it is not just about how many facebook “likes” or Twitter followers that a company can collect, but it is what you do with this customer base through social media platforms now and in the future that creates the ROI a company needs.