Most every company is — and all should be — using social media but learning how to use it successfully can be really difficult. Should a company get someone to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day, or should they make contests and other engaging activities for customers — how should they spend their time and money?

No company is the same, but the researchers at ENGAGEMENTdb have compiled a report detailing how the big names successfully use social media to stay engaged. The report [PDF] details how the most engaged companies use social media to their advantage.

Starbucks is the current number one head honcho when it comes to social media engagement. So how do they do it?

First, it started with Starbucks’ desire to stay in contact with their customers, it might sound obvious, but the desire to engage an audience is crucial and it can’t be an afterthought or customers will figure out that the company really doesn’t care about what they are saying.

Alexandra Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy, at Starbucks told ENGAGEMENTdb about their social media philosophy.

“We live in the physical world with thousands of natural touch points, so when we laid out the vision for our social strategy, it felt like home for the brand. It’s about the relationships we form with our customers, not marketing,” Wheeler said.

Starbucks’ small — six people — social media team has beaten every other company with one simple mantra — stay in touch. Starbuck’s Twitter account is basically a mass of @replies to its 276,000 + followers and others. All it takes is a few filters and someone watching the Twitter account to make a real, valuable and intensely personal connection.

@Starbucks I need beans again. Any suggestions?
@bangengeman have you had Guatemala Antigua? It’s on my desk right now, and it’s delicious.

This extremely short correspondence is just a part of what makes Starbucks so successful, but this interaction can scale from a huge multinational company down to the local pizzeria. Take this interaction for example.

@johndoe I’m hungry, also broke
@localpizzaria Hey @johndoe I’ve got coupon for $3 off your order, call me up!

Instant engagement, @johndoe might not come down for the pizza today, but next time he’s thinking about food, he could well think of @localpizzaria.

Starbucks does a great job of cleaning up messes too, their logs are full of responses to people saying things like “the music is too loud at Starbucks.” To which Starbucks replied “tell the barista to turn it down or call us at 1-800-STARBUC.”

Their Facebook interaction is similar, but instead of the Twitter team replying, Starbucks can nearly let the fans take control and talk about how much they like the coffee. When it started its own corporate Facebook page, it went around asking each Starbucks group if it could take control — and most groups happily diverted their fandom to the Starbucks page. Starbucks makes bigger announcements on Facebook, including free pastry day, new items and the like — giving customers a reason to get off the Internet and go to the store.

Announcing deals, events and new menu items could bring people into that local pizzeria too.

Here is a sip of what Starbucks does on YouTube, again it engages customers and puts their new coffee in their mind through beautiful images on a very stripped-down commercial for the new bean.

That local pizzeria could take a hint from this, by putting up a quick video of a chef concoction or a new menu item. Maybe just ask some of the customers in the store what their favorite thing to eat is — anything to keep people thinking about the pizza and the pizzeria.

Starbucks also created a secondary site dedicated to customer and coffee fan ideas. Users can add their own idea or discuss ideas with others. But to vote, you need a Starbucks account, of course, then you’ll be getting promotions in the e-mail or snail mail too — adding another level of real interaction started via social media.

This option is available for most anyone, but for smaller businesses setting up a new site means investment, so they should makes sure people are going to respond to it, or it could just be a waste of time and money.

But getting stories from the delivery man could be a great way to engage the readers through creativity, the now defunct Streets of Pizza blog for example could serve as hilarious inspiration for a secondary viral site to carve out a warm spot in a pizza fan’s heart.

Starbucks says coordination and consistency is key to running a successful social media campaign. And that’s true, making a plan and keeping up to date with the non-stop social media flow is key. But it all boils down to engaging customers where they live and play.