“What are other people doing and what’s really working?” We got a sneak peak at some of the valuable information in The 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa. The accompanying chart shows us which social media marketing tactics are most often used and considered most effective by our marketing peers.

There are several tactics not listed here that I wish were.  For instance, apps, games, contests, and communities come  quickly to mind.  However it is interesting to see that blogger relations is considered so highly by those surveyed.  Many companies lack the resources to put consistent effort behind this but information like this might change their reasoning.  I also think that many of these tactics tend to be excuted in tandem and are probably most effective when that is the case.  Also, the greatest amount of effort tends to reside in simply creating valuable content and communications that can flow out into the social media arena.  Once you have done that, it is much easier to leverage it across multiple tactics.