Here are this week’s top five SM4B posts.  Enjoy!

Making Social Media a Tool, Not a Distraction by @benparr on the American Express OPEN Forum

Ben Parr provides tips that will help to make sure your company gets the most out of social media and prevents it from being a distraction.

Share this or save it to your FYIndOut folder.

Get Higher ROI from a B2B Email Marketing Campaign by @b2bcommunicate on Red On Marketing

Rebekah Donaldson provides tips on creating a great newsletter that will capture you customers’ interest and provides examples of topics to cover.

Share this or save it to your FYIndOut folder.

Blogging for Position – How to Set Up and Run a Keyword Blog by @kateheaden on Savvy B2B Marketing

Knowing that search engines love blogs, Kate Headen shares advice on how to set up a blog, create a schedule, and select topics that will help attract the people your company is looking for.

Share this or save it to your FYIndOut folder.

The Four Spheres Of Social Media Strategy by @jasonfalls on Social Media Explorer

Jason Falls shares his Four Spheres of Social Media Strategy, where they overlap, and the impact of each and solicits feedback on what he’s shared.

Share this or save it to your FYIndOut folder.

5 Ways to Use Social Media Activity Offline by @ducttape on the American Express OPEN Forum

John Jantsch believes that small businesses will get the greatest bang for their social media buck when they think in terms of merging their online and offline networking and marketing and provides five ways to help make it happen.

Share this or save it to your FYIndOut folder.

Business.com recently published their 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study which shows that the use of social media is no longer a question of adoption but of utilization.  Below are some interesting statistics that should interest those using social media for business.

Use of social media as a business information resource by Company Size

Companies with 10 employees or less tend to use social media the most as a business information resource, followed by mid size companies (100-499 employees), Small businesses (11-99 employees) and large corporations (500+ employees).

Most popular social media resources for information

Out of the 2,393 participants, the top five resources for information included:

1. Attending webinars or listening to podcasts – 69.1%
2. Read user ratings and reviews for business products or services – 62.2%
3. Visit company or product profile pages on social media sites – 62.1%
4. Visit company blogs – 55.1%
5. Conduct searches for information on social media sites – 54.5%

Usefulness of different social media for business information

It was interesting to see that the five most popular resources were not also all the five most useful.  Those ended up being:

1. Attending webinars or listening to podcasts
2. Read user ratings and reviews for business products or services
3. Subscribe to RSS Feeds of business related news or information sites
4. Read or download business related content on 3^rd party content sharing sites
5. Participate in online business communities or forums

Number of social media sites used to find business information

Surprisingly 63.8% of respondents use five or more social media sites to get information and resources.  14.4% use ten or more.