In order of value:

Social Media Channels

1. Forums
2. Blogs
3. Social Networks
4. Social Bookmarking
5. Social News Sites

Non-Social (Direct) Media Channels

1. Your Dedicated Mailing List
2. Joint Ventures
3. Squeeze Pages
4. Banner Marketing
5. Polls
6. Pay Per Click Advertising
7. Co-Registration

At MaryEllen’s company they may not do much or any search engine optimization (SEO), however mentally add SEO to the list above because for many businesses it’s a huge profit generator and a relatively small expense.

Here’s another perspective offered up by eMarketer.com recently:

Original article: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007131

Also, in a recent seminar on Twitter by the highly respected MarketingExperiments.com (one of my favorite haunts) a researcher in the company reported that Dell was one of the few and only companies actually making profit from Twitter. Dell sells refurbished computer equipment through their Twitter channel.

Keep that in mind when considering doing social media–just because there’s a buzz about it and it seems like everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean it will be profitable. If you have a small business budget and limited time I recommend you consider hitting Mary Ellen’s list of non-social media channels first. Making social networks profitable can not only be difficult and time consuming but expensive. 

I’ll give you one social media channel exception to consider though. That is having a blog to assist with list building, and even sales. Here’s why.

If you can create a great blog and keep it updated weekly you will be

1. regularly generating and growing new content which gives you better chances of ranking in search engines,
2. by social bookmarking and spreading your blog posts around the Internet you can pull in traffic, this traffic doesn’t typically sell immediately, however you can use it to build an email list of subscribers and these subscribers can become loyal followers and customers.

While there are other great reasons to maintain a blog which I’ll talk about on this blog, these reasons above will generate traffic and can lead to sales.

I’m always curious to know what works for you, so I invite you to share you’re own biggest online marketing channel successes below…