Social media is gaining greater acceptance across all levels of business from the SMB to the multi-national enterprise. No surprise there. What is beginning to play out though is the fact that the space is new and evolving. As a result, some of the techniques or tactics that seem to be the ‘norm’ are now being seen a bit differently. Why? Because there may be other things that just work better. That’s where the evolving part comes in.

eMarketer reports on a Marketing Profs survey (this link is for a synopsis of survey that is for sale and we are not in any way associated with that sale) from earlier in September 2009 that shows what is usually done on some social media outlets isn’t what is driving results.

The most common marketing tactic used on Facebook was attempting to drive traffic to corporate materials through status updates, followed by friending customers.

But the most effective tactic for consumer-oriented companies was creating a Facebook application, which was done by less than one-quarter of total respondents.

The chart below tells the rest of the story:

Now that’s for Facebook. Apparently the same rules apply for Twitter.

Like those on Facebook, marketers using Twitter were also most interested in increasing traffic. Driving traffic by linking to marketing Webpages was the most common activity on the microblogging site, followed by driving sales by linking to promotional pages. But again, the most effective tactics were different.

So what was Twitter most effective at for companies? Online reputation monitoring and management. Sure you can drive traffic to your site but there is always the question of the quality of the traffic you drive. As for responding to a negative comment or seeing your brand get trashed? That’s easy and obvious to spot and there is no real wiggle room. It is what it is. As a result companies need to respond and there is a ‘measurable’ result. Here is how the rest of the uses panned out.

So where are you on this one? Do you use social media in ways that may not be talked about in the mainstream but have yielded success for you? Remember, it’s OK to share because it’s about social media. No secrets here .