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Social media, and discussions of its value for PR and marketing, have become ubiquitous. But which social media tool do marketers find most valuable? What’s the best tool for social media research and learning? How can you maximize the business value of tools like LinkedIn and Twitter? How can you explain the value of social media to skeptics?

Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on social media marketing from this year so far.

11 Reasons You Can’t Ignore Social Media in 2009 by Digital Labz

Social media now has wide adoption as a marketing and PR tool, but for those still reluctant to use tools like blogs, video, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing, Eric Brantner offers almost a dozen reasons to get started, such as “social media is gaining trust,” it’s fast, it’s passionate, and it’s free (at least the tools are for the most part).

Study: Company Blogs Lead Social Media Options by MediaPost

Mark Walsh reports that “blogging (is) the most important lead-generation source among social media options, followed by StumbleUpon, YouTube, Facebook, De.lic.ious and Digg” (not a surprising result, considering that those other sites tend to support a corporate blog, not replace it). He also quotes a HubSpot study finding that three-quarters of bloggers in small to midsize companies say that “their company blogs were ‘useful,’ ‘important,’ or ‘critical’ to their business.”

Another MediaPost article worth checking out is Scout Labs Offers Cheaper Way To Monitor Consumers. Gavin O’Malley writes that Scout Labs offers “a more economical consumer sentiment-tracking service for agencies and marketers” than Nielsen BuzzMetrics or TNS Cymfony. The company has an impressive list of clients using its tool to monitor and analyze brand conversations across the social media landscape.

Top 5 SlideShare Groups – A Rich Learning Environment for Social Media by uber.la

John McElhenney praises SlideShare as an innovative social media tool and links to his favorite groups for learning about and sharing knowledge of social media.

How to be a LinkedIn superstar by iMedia Connection

Larry Weintraub explains how to get the most out of LinkedIn, from creating the right kind of profile, building connections and soliciting recommendations to working with LinkedIn groups.

Social Media Marketing 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch

For those either still new to social media, or just struggling to explain its value to a manager or client, Ron Jones provides an excellent explanation of social media, the different types of sites on the social media landscape, and the marketing and PR benefits of using social media.

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business by Social for Business

As the title promises, here are more than four dozen ideas on how to use Twitter for business, categorized into five groups including “Ideas about WHAT to Tweet” (e.g., ask questions, retweet interesting information from others, and when retweeting your own stuff, make sure it has value to the reader and isn’t just self-promotion) and “Some Positives to Throw Back” when people argue that Twitter is a waste of time, such as Twitter’s value in breaking real-time news and quickly collecting market feedback.

The Periodic Table of the Social Media Elements by eyecube

This very clever and ambitious post compares social media to chemistry, and lays out a “periodic table” for social media encompassing different behaviors (e.g., sharing and listening), key influencers (David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Joe Pulizzi, etc.), tools (delicious, Feedburner, LinkedIn et al.), practices, blogs and more.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2009 (S0 Far): AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Twitter Tips and Tactics, Part 1

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 2

Tags: brian-solis, digital-labz, eric-brantner, eyecube, hubspot, joe-pulizzi, john-mcelhenney, larry-weintraub, linkedin, mark-walsh, mediapost, nielsen-buzzmetrics, part-1, ron-jones, scout-labs, social-media-marketing, social-media-tools, tns-cymfony, twitter, uber-la

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 8:17 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.