Diane D. Stein

Your customers are using social media. That’s no surprise. So is it appropriate for you to join in on the fun and get your business on board? I know what some of you are thinking. “Sure, I know everyone’s using social media, but my company sells products that cost a ton of money and sales can take years to close. I can’t generate a sale, or even a lead, for any of my products using Facebook or Twitter.” If you just said some version of that to yourself, let me reframe the way you might want to think about social media for your business. Click here to read more... smartblogs.com

Best Companies rank: 57
Social media used: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, RenRen, TripAdvisor, internal and external blog

The longtime face of Marriott International, Bill Marriott, has operated a blog since 2007, and the company uses mainstream social media such as Facebook and Twitter extensively -- Marriott says it leads the hospitality industry in Twitter followers and is on pace to make it to the top in Facebook "likes" soon -- but the company ventures into new ground with its My Marriott Hotel social game. The game allows users to manage different elements of a Marriott hotel. Even with languages such as Arabic and Mandarin supported, it might come as a surprise that the city with the most players is Cairo, according to the company.

Associates can post ideas for corporate changes to the "Did You Think of This" internal website, and several hundred entered a video contest submission through Marriott's jobs and careers pages on Facebook. The company also periodically has its officers hold question and answers sessions online, such as a human resources executive providing insight into the job search.

NEXT: Google