The CMO’s Guide to Social Media [Infographic]

As the selection of social media platforms grow, it’s becoming harder and harder to know what’s worth investing time in and where to focus efforts. Platform priorities may change  dependent on the main marketing objectives/motivations of the company.

An interesting study by Burson Marsteller based on some of the world’s larger brands (in this case  Fortune 100 companies) reveals the social media platform selection and useage types that these brands are currently active in. Here’s the key takeaways (via i-Strategy)…

• 79% of the Fortune 100 are present and listening, using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• 20% of Companies are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs)
• 82% of the Fortune 100 update and engage with customers on their Twitter account
• Fortune 100 Companies on average post 3.6 wall posts to their Facebook page per week
• 50% of the Fortune 100 have a YouTube account and upload 10 videos on average a month

What we don’t get as part of this study though are the marketing objectives for why each of these brands may be using each social media platform.

This infographic, created by CMO.com, provides a very top level heat map of what value  each of the key social platforms could offer an organisation. Although I’m not saying that I completely agree with all of the summaries for each, it is a good top level guide.

For instance; there’s a statement that Facebook won’t necessarily provide that much traffic to your site, but we know for a fact that Facebook is rapidly catching up Google in terms of visits in the UK and with  those brands that have got it right (some in retail) often have a higher number of conversions from Facebook than Google itself. Another recent report by Typepad featured on Mashable revealed that Facebook Like increases referrals on the sample of blogs by almost 50%. With more and more brands integrating the ‘Like’ code on their sites’ this will also be interesting to keep an eye on.   Perhaps there should be an additional objective focusing on traffic quality (engagement, conversions, actions, return visits) too, although this would obviously be unique to each company.

Regardless, I think this is a really useful infographic – covering the pros/cons of using each platform for different types of objectives. Click to enlarge and check it out.

So do you agree with the advice for each platform?