"From Facebook to YouTube to Digg and beyond, which media outlets will net the most bang for the buck in terms of customer communication, brand exposure, traffic, and SEO? For an analysis of which social media tools are your best bet, CMO.com turned to 97th Floor, an SEO and social media firm. (Full disclosure: CMO.com is a 97th Floor client.) Here's 97th Floor's take on 10 social network choices." download it here : http://www.cmo.com/sites/default/files/CMO-SOCIAL%20LANDSCAPE-R5.pdf

1. THE CMO’S GUIDE TO:
THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE 2010 IS THE YEAR CMOS WILL HEAVILY INVEST IN SOCIAL MEDIA. HERE’S A GUIDE TO
HELP YOU UNDERSTAND HOW BEST TO LEVERAGE MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES.
GOOD! OK. BAD!
CUSTOMER BRAND TRAFFIC TO
WEBSITE COMMUNICATION EXPOSURE YOUR SITE SEO
Use keyword search monitor- O ers unique opportunities Potential can be large, but Value to your site's SEO is
ing through a program such for Web site integration and promotion is an art form -- limited, but tweets will rank
promote your brand too heav- high in search results -- good
A microblogging site as Hootsuite, TwitJump or to engage with customers
for ranking your profile name
that enables users Radian 6 to track what people in a viral way, helping your ily and turn o followers, yet and breaking news, though
to send ‘tweets’, or are saying about you and your company stand out from the don't promote enough and shortened URLs are of little
messages of 140 receive little attention.
characters or less
competitors. masses. benefit.
Facebook brand pages are great Traffic is decent and on the
Great for engaging people for brand exposure. Jump-start rise thanks to share buttons Little to no value, aside from
who like your brand, want your brand exposure through and counters, but don't blogs picking up and featuring
A social networking to share their opinions, and the ad platform, or hire a Face- expect massive numbers of your posted links. Not worth
site where users participate in giveaways and book consultant to help you unique visitors to go to your the time expenditure.
can add friend, send contests.
messsages and build grow your brand presence. site.
their own profile
Unnecessary to spend too Participation in industry-related Even if you get tens of Heavily indexed in search
much time on this, though groups might get your photos, thousands of visits to a photo
An image and video engines, passing links and page
properly tagged photosets and thus your brand, viewed by hyperlinked with your URL,
hosting website ranks. Also helps images rank
of company events can help people with similar interests, click-through rates are among
where community higher in Google Images and in
members can share customers put a face on the but numbers will be small. the lowest around. building inbound links.
and comment on team behind your brand.
media
E ective for personal branding
Not the primary focus, but cus- Very high page rank -- almost
and demonstrating your organi- Unlikely to drive any significant
tomer engagement opportuni- guaranteed on the first page
zation's professional prowess. traffic to your site, though you
ties are possible by answering of search results -- especially
A social networking Encouraging employees to never know who those few
site for business industry-related questions, for your company name or
maintain complete profiles to visits might be from -- perhaps individual employees' names,
professionals establishing yourself as an
strengthen your team's reputa- a potential client or customer. but that's about it.
expert in the field.
tion is advisable.
Whether you seek to entertain,
inform, or both, video is a One of the most powerful brand- Traffic goes to the videos. If Very good for building links
ing tools on the Web when you the goal is to get traffic back to
powerful channel for quickly back to your site because videos
build your channel, promote via your site, then add a hyperlink
A video sharing engaging your customers, rank high. Also a tried-and-true
high-traffic sites, and brand your in the video description, but
website where users responding to complaints, and don't expect traffic to correlate way for your brand to gain
can share and upload demonstrating your social- videos. exposure.
new videos closely with video views.
media savvy.
Opportunities are huge, espe- The grandfather of traffic Very good because even if your
Not the site's primary strength, spikes, so become active in the
though occasionally an objec- cially for promoting objective story doesn't become popular,
community or find someone who then your page will still be
press/blog coverage of your
tive third-party writeup as a PR is. If your site is corporate, then indexed quickly. If your story
brand. Make sure content
A social news site e ort, perhaps to counteract consider launching an industry does become popular, this is
doesn't read like an ad, or your blog on a noncommercial Web
where users can bad press or customer senti- likely the best site in terms of
discover and share site might be banned for being domain to establish yourself as a
ment, can be promoted. overly commercial. getting linked to by bloggers.
content thought leader.
Paid StumbleUpon traffic can A paid campaign can be good Enables a diverse range of Very good if your story makes
be a very targeted method of for brand awareness, especially people to discover your it to the top page for its tag.
communicating, but whether following e orts to get free, content and share links via the StumbledUpon's large user
organic traffic to your home su.pr link shortener on Twitter. base enables many people to
A social news
you're reaching your existing page. Targeting is very accurate, Tagging helps, but you don't
customers is purely random find and link to your stories.
community where but keep in mind you're paying want the same people repeat-
members discover and costly to determine. For vanity name searches,
5 cents per visit ($50 CPM). edly giving you a thumbs-up.
and share webpages profile pages rank well, too.
Noncommercial sites are heavily If you make the front page of
Editor-driven and moderated, Get in the moderators' good Yahoo, then you will get a ton
favored by moderators, so graces, and you have a chance
so this shouldn't be your business sites should not waste of backlinks, but chances are
A social news site to hit absolutely massive num-
where community primary focus. time in this uphill battle. unlikely unless you are a large,
members can vote
bers -- but it's a long shot. established brand.
on stories
The community is fickle, and If Reddit loves you, then traffic
Unless you're a bacon company,
anything perceived as spam is o en right up there with Digg Make the front page and
don't try to build your brand
will be destroyed. However, and StumbleUpon. Be careful: many reputable sites will pick
here. You'll end up banned from
A social news look deep into the categorized Push too hard for votes from up your story, generating valu-
the site without even realizing able backlinks and extending
community where "subreddits" to unearth small your friends and risk being
users post links to what happened. trust to your site.
niche communities, and you banned, but don't push at all
the site’s home page could get valuable feedback. and you'll wind up with nothing.
Pretty much everything about
Site is intended for people to Not enough ongoing brand rec- the site helps: When your page
Not as big as it used to be, but is bookmarked, it's a direct link
bookmark content. You can ognition to make it worth your informative, massive reference
A social bookmark- back to your site. When you're
ing site used for see what people tag with your while unless you want to be pieces bookmarked for later on the front page of the site, the
sharing and storing brand name, but communica- known for providing reference use can net you a few thousand big category tag pages are full of
bookmarked pages tion with them is nonexistent. content for later retrieval. recurring monthly visitors. trust, which will pass directly to
your URL.