Although social media is of growing significance within the marketing discipline, research is fragmented and requires further investigation. In particular, it is noted that organizations face various barriers when implementing social media within their overall marketing strategy, but little research has addressed the implementation process. This research develops original, rigorous, and practically relevant research on the capabilities required in organizations to use social media within the business-to-business domain. By applying a qualitative, in-depth, case study research methodology, this paper identifies a four-phase process of strategy development that twelve firms went through in the development of their social media strategy. We identify how organizations put dynamic and adaptive capabilities into practice in harnessing resources to build the capacity for sensing, shaping and seizing the opportunities available through social media. The resulting model identifies both the journey organizations go through when implementing social media, and the capabilities they must develop to progress through each phase.