One of the points that I make in Chapter 14 of "Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day" (see http://budurl.com/deln) is to begin an internal effort by focusing on business objectives and the behaviors of your customers. In other words, social media isn't a new trick: it's a marketing discipline that may or may not have applicability in any specific case. So, the first step is to see if it is applicable. Once applicability is determined, develop a baseline for what is being said about your brand, product, or service right now (as Joe notes in his response). Then, build social media into your current marketing program, and get early buy-in from Operations on supporting the learnings that follow.
Starting your internal program in this way puts you on a solid footing: your social program is grounded in business objectives, your audience behavior is accounted for, and you're ready to talk about how social media is being used by your current customers right now. This is a far better starting point than, say, opening your presentation with a slide on MySpace or Twitter or whatever, very likely leading into a defensive conversation about why some people find these spaces useful. That approach is not likely to get you where you want to go, and is instead more likely to distract everyone present.
Start with businesses objectives, audience, current examples, and build a plan that complements your existing efforts.
