You aren’t alone if you’re trying to figure out where to begin when it comes to doing more — or doing at least something — in social media in your organization. At last night’s Social Media Club meet up in Boston, we surfaced some great tips for building support with management, setting up projects for success, and getting used to the realities and joys of non-stop trial and error.

Here are seven ideas for taking the plunge or expanding what you’ve started:

1. Embrace experimentation as a way of life.
By it’s very nature, social media is participation-driven and enabled by technology — which means it’s always changing and the variables are pretty much infinite. Measurement is evolving. You and your executives need to develop an appetite — actually, real enthusiasm — for experimentation. As panelist Michelle Glorie of Kronos put, “Your executives have to understand the need to take action. They have to be willing to try things and see what sticks.” (To mitigate risk and increase the comfort factor, keep reading below.) Mike Volpe of HubSpot had a great analogy for the experimentation mindset: “Think like a VC, with a portfolio of possibilities. Some will hit, but not all.” Spread the risk, learn from everything you do, and keep investing.

2. Start small. Think evolution, not revolution.
You might even be “doing social media” already. Next time you’ve got big news, something as simple as creating a companion podcast/video interview makes your news more engaging and shareable. As a number of PR folks in the room advised, just post it to YouTube, on your website and share the links via email to customers, prospects and bloggers who follow your industry. You’ll see that it doesn’t hurt and nobody dies. So make it a series. See what kind of downloading action you get, and ask for feedback wherever you post it.

3. Monitor what’s going on (and make new insights easy to appreciate)
John Cass (now online community manager at Forrester) shared an example from interviews he’d done with Wendy Harman at the Red Cross. She created daily reports for Red Cross execs on what’s going on online, what people are saying about the Red Cross by using free tools like Twitter, Google alerts, and Flickr. She helped them see the value of this new source of insights and offered advice on specific action the Red Cross could take, building a case for more proactive involvement.

4. Start inside.
Lots of companies launch blogs internally first, often within the corporate intranet. It’s a safe place to experiment, and to surface those with the natural talent and inclination to sustain blog posting. It’s also a great way to get employees used to a new style of communicating, not to mention learning about the organization in a more immediate and less packaged way (assuming blog posts are timely, authentic, and interesting!)

5. Have trust in your people (or get some people you can trust)
The new realities of social media — always on, everyone has a voice, sharing is paramount — bring with it much less control, more immediacy and unpredictability. Which means you and your boss and your team mates have to trust each other to use their best judgment; micromanaging is not an option. If you don’t have that kind of trust, consider making a change. In your team or your choice of employer. (Thanks to Parna Sarkar-Basu of Invention Machine for this point, who credits her great relationship with her boss for their early successes in social media.)

6. Involve the legal team at the beginning (especially if you’re a public company)
It sounds counter-intuitive but the best thing you can do is proactively engage your legal folks. Much better than having them send up red flags when you’re about to launch something. Offer a social media 101 session, show the impact of social media on the business, how other companies are navigating these new waters, and encourage their collaboration on ways to overcome any concerns they may have.

7. Evangelize, and train everyone
If you’re the social media champion, unleash your beliefs and savvy on as many groups across the company as you can. Go to corporate communications and help them see how to shift from message control to two way conversations, talk to your web team about easy ways to inject more participation into the site, create a social media 101 workshop or e-learning event and resources, and work with HR or whomever to get it shared throughout the company. (Evidently Intuit has a great internal training program pioneered by Scott Wilder, group manager of Intuit’s QuickBooks online community. Will try to get more on this.)

You can also do the old fashioned social thing and get yourself and some colleagues to physical events like those hosted by the Social Media Club which has chapters all around the world. When a bunch of smart people who care about the same thing get in a room, something interesting and useful always happens…

What obstacles and ideas for getting over the hump to do more in social media have you thought about?