Social media today isn’t just an integral part of our daily conversations, its also turning out to be an essential business tool for corporates. From this month, I’m introducing this series for those who want to get up to speed on news and trends in the social media space.

The CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape

Social media marketing is expected to dominate this year — so much so that 81% of CMOs plan to link their annual revenues to their social media investment, according to a recent survey by The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice. But the growing list of online social media sites makes choosing the right route complicated. From Facebook to YouTube to Digg and beyond, which media outlets will net the most bang for the buck in terms of customer communication, brand exposure, traffic, and SEO?

Here is a guide to help you understand how to best leverage social media…

http://www.cmo.com/social-media/cmos-guide-social-media-landscape

5 Hopes for a more social Gmail

Google on Tuesday is reportedly going to unveil a new social service that will incorporate a stream of “media and status updates” into Gmail. These streams would not be public, but would require you to connect with your fellow Google users and may eventually incorporate other Google services like YouTube and Picasa, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While a Google-developed social media stream incorporated into Gmail sounds like an interesting concept, it also sounds like Google is trying to create a closed version of Twitter where your status updates are not public by default, but private. That’s a mistake to my mind, and I certainly hope that rumors are wrong on that point.

We will likely find out more soon. Google has sent invitations out to the media for a 10 a.m. (Pacific Time) press conference set for Tuesday.

In the interim, here are five things Google should do to make Gmail’s rumored social networking stream a winner.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/188852/5_hopes_for_a_more_social_gmail.html

How Businesses are spending their social media dollars (an infographic)

Sky News Orders All Journalists to Install Tweetdeck

Sky News is installing Twitter’s most popular application Tweetdeck on all of it’s journalist’s computers in the hope that it will stir the use of social media for newsgathering and reporting.

Initially hiring Ruth Barnett as their Social Media rep in March of last year, the company has now relocated her to its Westminster Bureau and is aiming to instil the “social media mindset” into all of its writers rather than just the one.

http://thenextweb.com/uk/2010/01/07/news-organisation-orders-journalists-install-tweetdeck/

Social networks are growing in niches

The growing success of Facebook – now well ahead of MySpace – has forced the latter to revamp itself, building on its core strength of music. If MySpace becomes more of a niche player, albeit a huge one, then it may simply be part of a trend. Niche is the new buzzword. There are already lots of niche networking sites including linkedin.com, plaxo.com, xing.com and asmallworld.net. But there are new niche networks in the pipeline including two – would you believe it – from Britain with global ambitions. They are simple and, unlike the startups in the dotcom boom, they think they know how to make money.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/26/socialnetworking.finerday