The 21st century has already brought us some pretty amazing and powerful inventions and innovations: robotics, cloning and genetic engineering to name a few. But from the day-to-day perspective for most individuals and businesses, wed be remiss not to talk about the profound impact of social media.

Social media networks can add an awesome dimension to customer, employee and investor relations. Whether youre leveraging Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or YouTube, social media can add and link customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders to your business every second of every day. This potential for accelerated access to your customers and investors is an impelling reason to make social media a priority for your Board. Here are some ways to make that happen.

Listen. Engage. Persuade.

As one former digital activist told us, Whether you like it or not, people out there on social media are talking about you, reading about you and making up their minds about you []. If you are not part of these conversations, guess whos in charge of public perception and brand reputation? The consumers you have angered, your competitors and the activists that hate you.

Tracking social media conversations allows a company to understand which topics are provoking discussions. It also allows them to intervene when needed to sway the discourse in their favor. The best way to mitigate reputational risk is by monitoring social media chatter and ensuring your company is well placed to respond rapidly. Organizations should listen, engage and persuade in that order and quickly.

Opportunities often remain underexploited

Companies active in social media conversations often lead the way with customers and employees. These companies dont only turn to social media when things go wrong but regularly engage with customers and use these outlets to build loyalty. Benefits of using social media may include generation of revenue growth through better targeting and reduction of costs by elimination of less-effective advertising.

Many audit committee chairs remain skeptical of the benefits of employee usage of social media. However, research indicates that employees trained on the proper use of social media channels actually become highly effective ambassadors for their companies.

In addition, with investors and analysts increasingly drawn to social media for both communication and research purposes, investor relations departments have found social media to be an effective communications channel. A 2012 survey revealed that 32% of western European companies use at least one form of social media to communicate with investment professionals.

Boards should take an active oversight role

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EYVoice: Tweet It, Link It, 'Book It: Social Media And The Board