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It seems to me that the ever increasing demands placed on blog owners to enhance the growth of their business through the use of social media tools, has left many a bit unsure as to which tool best suit their needs. In fact, one of the most common questions I’m asked is along the lines of “Which social web site is the best for me?“, followed by a plethora of names, ranging through Digg, StumbleUpon, twitter, LinkedIn and so on.

One thing I’d like to clarify before continuing. Online social media promotion tools (such as the sites mentioned above) are best used as an extension of your existing, traditional marketing activities. The benefits in most cases result in:

• More targeted audience.
• Greater geographic reach.
• Reduction in marketing costs.
• Save time (in other words using time in a more productive effective manner).

However, the above are only some of the most immediate that come to mind.

One thing I always try to advise clients is to break down their business or blog promotion requirements to reflect the jobs (or responsibilities) at hand. Generally, there are four primary groups:

Management. Your are the blog and/or business owner. Your primary goal should be to raise awareness and visibility of your products, services, content, etc. You should work towards being the leader in your niche (whatever that is). Additionally, you’re the one that should seek out talent you require to that end.

Public Relations. You are the one that should be monitoring what visitors, blog followers, clients, etc. are saying about your blog and business. You should be responding to them and illicit discussion, creating “spins” and attention to your blog and the business or community it represents.

Marketing. Your job is to ensure you’ve targeted the appropriate venues to stream your information to (the blog, products, services, etc.) You are doing this to build traffic, that is one of your primary functions.

Sales. Your role is to find or create new business leads. As such, you need to establish an effective network in order to move forward, expanding it as new contacts are added to your database.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, most people who launch and maintain a blog, provide the functions at each level above. For many of us, that is where some of the questions begin. Which tool is best for which function?

The illustration below illustrates this issue:

As I’m sure you could appreciate, there are hundreds of social media tools available. In the above diagram, I’ve only selected a few of them. So… Let’s recap:

Managers/Blog owners can use tools like Pownce (closed on Dec. 15, 2008), Plurk, Twitter, etc so as to increase awareness of their information (as well as their visibility) within online communities. You are using a blog, right?

Side note: You can follow me on twitter here: @BloggerSavvy

Marketing gurus however, can best capitalize on tools like Stumbleupon, Digg, Flickr, Reddit, Furl, Delicious, Youtube, Newsvine, Mixx, etc. to get the “word out” where communities can access it and visit the appropriate content on your blog. Such tools provide a superior venue for increasing your blog traffic and at a cheaper cost, than traditional solutions.

The sales people need to maximize their contacts and find others contacts. Tools like LinkedIn, hi5, Bebo, MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, Freindster, etc. are best able to facilitate this. You can build your contacts much faster then via traditional methods.

Of course the PR people need to keep their fingers on the pulse. They need to be aware of what is being said and need to respond (which I’ll note in a moment). Some good tools to help monitor what’s being said about you in the blogsphere are Technorati, Backtype, GetSatisfaction, Twitscoop, etc. As I just mentioned, PR people need to respond to some of the things they find. Commonly, tools like Dig, Reddit, Flickr, GetSatisfaction, etc. provide the facility for effective responses to individuals and the community as a whole.

In conclusion, one point I’ve also tried to impress is to ensure you’re using the right tool to get the right response and right traffic. After all traffic just for the sake of traffic is a futile exercise. For example, I’d rather have visitors to this blog that are genuinely interested in the contents, than to have a ton of disinterested traffic that does nothing other than use my bandwidth up (costing me more money).

What tools do you use that I’ve not mentioned? What are your thoughts? Feel free to let us know in your comments! Any new startups we all should know about? - Announce them below.

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