While social media has been embraced by millions of consumers, from a marketer’s standpoint, it is still a huge puzzle. Measuring and justifying the value of a social media campaign continues to stump marketers from both small businesses and large enterprises.

Based on the premise that multiple heads are better than one, a nonprofit organization called the Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC) has gathered marketers from Google, HBO, Ford Motor, Oracle’s Vitrue and other major companies to tackle the challenge known as social media marketing.

SMAC’s mission, according to the company’s Web site, is to educate member companies on issues and trends in social media as well as help members drive business opportunities and showcase their social media best practices (think of it as a think-tank with lots of networking opportunities.)

The organization invites executives from select marketing agencies, consumer-facing companies, and industry partners to join SMAC as board members. “There might be competing brands on the board, but we all have a common interest in moving the social industry forward,” maintains Nichole Goodyear, executive director of SMAC.

Sabrina Caluori, vice president of social media and performance marketing at HBO, says she is excited to work with many of SMAC’s members.

“The board is a veritable who’s who of social media leaders,” says Goodyear. “We’re all in similar circles and I’m excited to find out what [PepsiCo's] Shiv Singh and Bonin Bough have been working on, and what Scott [Monty, global digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford Motor] has been doing.”

Noting that SMAC has a “solid agenda” of panel discussions and brainstorming sessions in store for its board members, Rikard Steiber, global marketing director of mobile and social advertising at Google, says he is also looking forward to networking and sharing ideas.

“Social media is important to our users and advertisers and we need to get stronger in it,” acknowledges Steiber. “Hopefully by being part of this board we will be able to learn new things and share some of our knowledge.”

In addition to swapping ideas and speaking on panels, the board members will also be working on a set of guidelines for measuring and justifying investments in social media, explains Goodyear.

“Over the next twelve months we will be releasing a body of work that will outline the important things to measure to find the ROI in social media,” Goodyear says. “We feel the industry is in need of standards on what type of social actions should be created around your brand and how do you measure and value that.”

Here’s the complete list of SMAC’s newest board members:

•  Joe Burton, President & COO, SocialChorus
•  Reggie Bradford, CEO & Founder, ViTrue, Inc.
•  Sabrina Caluori, Vice President, Social Media & Performance Marketing, HBO
•  Mike Edelhart, CEO, Pivotcon
•  Sharon Feder, COO, Mashable
•  Alan Osetek, President, Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group Company
•  Karen Robinovitz, Co-Founder & CCO, Digital Brand Architects
•  Avi Savar, Founder and CCO, Big Fuel
•  Karen Spiegel, SVP & Managing Director of Communications/Marketing, RGA
•  Rikard Steiber, Global Marketing Director, Mobile & Social Advertising, Google/Google+

Returning members include marketing executives from Deep Focus, GE, IBM, and Weber Shandwick. Absent from the organization are marketers from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.