eMarketer recently ran a webinar on Social Media in the Marketing Mix – Global Best Practices, which covered the following:

• How are marketers creating and executing global social media campaigns?
• How can companies overcome cultural, language and other barriers when doing social media marketing?
• What are the best practices for businesses to manage their social media presence around the world?
• What are the pros and cons of using worldwide social media such as Facebook or Twitter vs. working with local social platforms?

We’re rather chuffed that We Are Social was included as one of the four vendors they identified as able to help marketers on a global basis.

It’s worth either watching the recording of webinar or going through their deck below:

Did you know that more people have mobile phone subscriptions than have electricity or safe drinking water?

And with over half of the US mobile subscribers now owning smartphones (it’s a similar picture in Europe), and Forrester predicting both that more people will access the internet from mobiles than PCs and that tablets with replace PCs for most consumers in the future, Adweek have put a great set of infographics together, delving a bit deeper into how we actually use these devices:

Facebook advertising revenue stalls despite strong growth
Figures from the 1st quarter of 2012 have shown that even the might of Facebook is not impervious to the advertising business cycle. Sales of $1.06 billion in Q1 were slightly down on the $1.13 billion reported in Q4 of 2011, though it’s not uncommon for marketers to tighten their belts at the start of a new year.

Even so, it’s important to emphasise how Facebook’s users remain enamoured with the site – the social network now has 900 million users, of which 526 million use the site every day.

Despite this Facebook has shown strong growth in areas beyond new users. A recent amendment to their filings for their public offering has shown that Facebook now hosts over 42 million pages and 9 million apps. Since December 31, 2011 the number of pages with 10 or more likes has increased by 5 million and  the number of integrated apps has increased by 2 million.

Facebook upgrades Android app
Late last week Facebook released an updated version of their Android app including updated messenger features and new shortcuts to encourage photo sharing. From the outside this seems like a direct attempt by Facebook to negate Google’s advantage on the platform. As they own the operating system Google can integrate Google+ into the phone in ways that Facebook cannot. The updated app hopes to combat this by adding new icons allowing users to access Facebook’s camera feature with ‘one tap’.

Facebook have further enhanced their Android offering by announcing that Android apps will now work the same as web apps – if you click on a link to an app from your mobile Facebook News Feed, it will now load on your Android phone (or take you to the download page if it’s not installed).

Instagram sharing on Twitter increases 20x in 12 months
The Instagram juggernaut keeps on rolling. Not satisfied with being bought for $1 billion dollars this month the photo sharing app has been taking Twitter by storm. Sharing between Instagram and Twitter has doubled in the last two months and is 20x what it was a year ago. Though some of this growth can be attributed to the new Android app, research shows that the average number of shares is also increasing. Impressive.

Facebook tests and launches a new set of features for select brands 
Facebook is testing a new button that will simplify the process through which Pages create Sponsored Stories directly from their posts. Rather than using a complex ad dashboard, the ‘promote’ button will appear on the Page publisher as well as on posts that have already gone live. The feature is aimed at small to medium sized businesses that want to promote their content but cannot afford premium products such as Facebook Reach Generator.

Facebook has also made Offers available through the API to a select number of partners. Offers are a new type of story that enables Page Owners to post coupons that fans can collect through the News Feed. Making this available through the API will allow developers to integrate the feature into their social media management systems.

In addition, Facebook have also relaunched their ‘Locations’ app to fit the Timeline layout. The app allows users to search from a company’s Page to find business locations near to them. At the moment the app is only available to select brands working with Facebook.

New Facebook Timeline apps
Christian Hernandez, Facebook’s Director of Platform Partnerships has revealed the latest set of Timeline apps to be released. JustGiving, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Sky Italy and Canal+ are among the 18 new additions to the Open Graph world.

Big business turns to Sina Weibo
A recent White Paper has shown that 30% of Fortune 500 companies have accounts on micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo. The report showed that there are currently more than 130,000 enterprise accounts in Sina Weibo, of which only 208 are from the US.

LinkedIn launch iPad app
LinkedIn have added an iPad app to their iPhone, Android and Mobile Web products. The app has the ability to sync with the iPad’s calendar offering the user Linkedin profile data on attendees of meetings and conferences.

Google+ launch share button
Google+ have launched a share button available to publishers worldwide to add to their site. What’s interesting about it is that is stands alongside the +1 button, in case users want to share to their Circles without necessarily showing approval to a story. Particularly at a time Facebook are downgrading the importance of the share button, it will be interesting to see how this performs.

Barcelona vs Chelsea sets new Twitter record
There’s nothing like a sporting giant killing to get us all talking. Last Tuesday was no exception with Chelsea’s dramatic upset of the reigning European Champions Barcelona sending Twitter into a frenzy of excitement. The game knocked the NFL’s Superbowl off the top spot as the biggest sporting event on Twitter peaking at 13,684 tweets per second. This demonstrates the growing use of Twitter as a way people share experiences of live events on a mass scale.

Will.i.am live-tweeting during The Voice 
Building on the theme of enhancing live events through social media, The Voice judge Will.i.am was not satisfied with merely providing entertainment through the UK’s TV screens. Will tweeted from his judging chair during the show to provide followers with extra insight into how he was feeling about his act’s performances.

Channel 4 air live Twitter response ad
On Sunday night, in the first ad break for Homeland, the UK’s Channel 4 premiered the trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s new film. Viewers were then asked to share their thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #areyouseeingthis, with the best tweets picked out to appear in a live response ad in the next break. It was the first time ever viewers tweets have been shown in a live response ad and it worked – the hashtag was a trending topic in the UK, and the response ad worked well:

With Prometheus also teaming up with Zeebox, a dual-screen TV app, to offer a pair of Premiere tickets to one winner out of the many who watched a synchronised ad through the app, it was a successful night for the film’s promo team.

Gawker’s new commenting service
Gawker have launched a new proprietary commenting system called Burner, which is based on anonymity.

What’s interesting is not so much the change itself, but the reasons behind it – namely, to disrupt commenting cliques. Removing names means that in theory, it won’t just be the same people repeatedly dominating commenting threads. Which all in all, is probably a good thing.

Elle launches Shoppable Trend Guide
Elle have launched a clever Facebook app where users can click ‘love’, ‘want’, ‘own’ or ‘buy’ on each product page. By default, all interactions with the app are shared automatically on their Facebook Timeline — so even if users don’t make a purchase, they may draw curious friends in to interact with the app. It’s a nice way of attempting f-commerce – including purchase as part of the app, rather than being the entire point of the app.

Pepsi launch global campaign focussing on social
Pepsi have launched a new brand campaign called Live For Now, which puts social at the heart of the campaign. This is partly through a ‘social media cheat sheet’, the #NOW board which pulls together the hottest stories from social media.

According to Techcrunch:

Beyond serving as a news aggregator, Singh says the site will include other features, like the ability for celebrities to pose challenges to their fans, and exclusive deals courtesy of sites like Thrillist. And naturally, the content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

But according to Pepsi, the campaign will go above and beyond the Pepsi micro-site:

As part of the “Live for Now” platform in the U.S., Pepsi will present a series of exclusive pop-up, Twitter-enabled concerts this summer featuring major music artists. Additionally, Pepsi’s first of its kind Twitter music partnership will enhance consumers’ music experiences and bring them closer to what is hot in music today.

Considering their previous success in social media, it will be interesting to see how this campaign gets on.

Kraft personally thanks 4,632 Facebook fans with music video
Apart from competition prizes, there’s very little reciprocal love from brands on Facebook. Kraft tried to change this on Tuesday. First, they posted on their Facebook Page ‘LIKE this post, and you never know what may happen’.

The post garnered over 4,600 likes – with each person then thanked in a ‘Likeapella music video’:

C&A Brazil puts Facebook likes on store hangers
Before Mother’s Day, C&A Brazil put Facebook like counters on the hangers in their flagship store – and uploaded their collection to their Facebook Page. Then, whenever anyone liked one of the products, the numbers would update in real-time. A nice way of convincing people to purchase.

Volkswagen create innovative flipbook ad for their Facebook Page
Volkswagen have created a genius little ad on their Facebook page. Through a photo album that doubles as a flipbook you can click to watch the Volkswagen Tricari Arc drive through the desert into an urban area in a continuous loop. The ad builds on what Smart Argentina did in Twitter recently, but is the first of its kind on a Facebook page. (The comments are also worth a read).

Hasbro bully tactics create social media backlash
Toy manufacturer Hasbro have received large scale condemnation for the way they dealt with blogger Martyn Yang. The blogger, whose hobby was writing about the brand, was tricked into giving his home address so that Hasbro could press legal proceedings against him. It seems ridiculous that brands still operate in this way when a quick email or phone call would have most likely wrapped the whole situation up with a far more satisfactory result.

Paying for Tweets is  a PR disaster waiting to happen
An ABC Media Watch revelation last Monday has opened a can of worms for organisations paying celebrities to tweet for them. The Australian highlighted the negative response by the Australian public to the South Australian Tourist Board paying chef Matt Moran $750 to tweet about Kangaroo Island. We Are Social’s own Julian Ward commented on how less than a dozen tweets can create a crisis for a brand:

The total reach of potentially damaging tweets was 3,453,843 and the cost is huge but unknown at this point. By doing what they have done, what does it say about the brand? Why go so cheap and why risk so much?

Our friend Dan Calladine, Head of Media Futures at Aegis Media, has kindly agreed to share his latest Next Generation Media Quarterly with us.

As the Guardian pointed out earlier this week, JESS3 and Eloqua have produced a UK specific edition of their ‘Blog Tree’:

Where blogs covering topics including technology, design and startups are ranked according to their influence.

Each blog is represented by a leaf on the tree, with the leaf’s height corresponding to its sphere of influence, as scored by BlogLevel. Scores are out of a theoretical maximum of 100.

The colour of a leaf denotes the respective blog’s subject-matter, where categories include PR, Social, SEO and Startup.

As the graphic shows, Smarta ranks highest with a score of 59.9, ahead of Jim’s Marketing Blog in second place and We Are Social in third.

The team here at We Are Social spends a lot of time tracking the latest developments in social media.

A large part of that investigation is designed to help us put together an accurate and up-to-date picture of social media platforms and their audiences around the world.

However, in addition to mapping out today’s social media behaviour, we also spend a lot of time thinking about what’s going to happen next – understanding how social media are likely to evolve, and identifying the next big opportunities for brands and organisations to connect with their audiences.

We’ve been working with a number of brands around the world over the past few months to explore that future, and those explorations helped inform a presentation we gave this morning at the Internet Show in Singapore.

The focus of our session was ’12 Provocations’ on the things that we believe will determine the next wave of success in social media.

It’s important to note that these aren’t ‘predictions’ in the classic sense; rather, they’re the areas we believe brands should be thinking about and bringing to life if they want to stay at the forefront of social media excellence.

Some of the underlying trends will (hopefully) sound familiar, but the key takeaways from this session were the implications for brands and marketers within these trends.

You’ll find the full context for these 12 provocations in the SlideShare deck above, but here’s a convenient overview:

1. Mobile Social
The future of social will be mobile, so marketers need to adapt their approach and content for smaller screens and slower connections.

2. SoLoMo Takes Over
With that shift to mobile, location-specific mobile platforms (SoLoMo) will move to the core of our audiences’ social media activities. As a consequence, marketers need to work out how they can bring their brands’ social promises to life wherever they have relevance.

3. Search-Social Crossover
People will increasingly turn to their social networks to get more personally relevant answers to their searches. As a result, conversations will become a central component of SEO – one reason why we believe Google is banking on Google+.

4. Social Baked-In
Social media experiences are no longer confined to host platforms. The Like, Tweet and +1 buttons are now ubiquitous across the web, and this trend towards ‘social everywhere’ functionality will only accelerate in the coming months.

5. Social CRM
There’s much more value to be earned from a conversation than there is when you simply talk at someone. As a result, brands need to shift the focus of social media activities away from an advertising mentality and into a more supportive, interactive approach.

6. Inclusive Content
People are more engaged when they are actually part of the action. As a result, brands need to explore ways to create content that features everyone in the audience, rather than simply delivering one-size-fits-all broadcast messaging.

7. Interface Innovation
The way we interact with internet-powered devices is changing all the time, and that change is accelerating. Brands need to rethink the ‘point-and-click’ paradigm of traditional web experiences, and start exploring multi-sensory social media experiences.

8. Curation and Funnelling
People are struggling to keep up with all the activity in their various social streams, and are turning to aggregation services like Flipboard and Zite to help manage that flow. However, there is currently no place on these platforms for platform-specific display advertising (e.g. Facebook banner ads) or hosted apps, so brands need to identify better ways to use core content to engage people organically.

9. Social ‘Nicheworks’
Brands are realising that huge fan bases mean little if no-one’s engaged. The savviest brands will begin to build small, highly engaged communities where they can learn more about what their audiences want, need, and desire.

10. Corporate Social Proactivity
Beyond just making great products, people expect brands to make a meaningful impact on their world. As a result, brands need to explore ways to actively build their broader communities, and use social media to celebrate these activities.

11. Influencer Measurement
A brand’s promise is much more credible when a third party endorses it. As a result, influencer activity will form a key part of brands’ social media strategies, but in order for that to be effective, we need more sophisticated and reliable ways to measure meaningful influence (beyond generic measures like reach). We fully expect to see the big monitoring companies push this area in the coming months.

12. End-to-End Measurement
Any marketer who says that they still don’t know which half of their marketing dollars is wasted is clearly not investing enough in measurement. Simple techniques like UTM tracking (for online purchase) and control group research (for offline purchase) can help reveal highly meaningful indications on the dollar value delivered by each specific social media activity.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, so we’d love to hear your thoughts on the trends that are shaping the future of social media too – why not let us know in the comments?

And if you’d like a more tailored view of the implications these ‘12 provocations’ will have for your brand, just drop us an email and we’ll be happy to explore the future with you.

Trust in social grows
According to Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, social networks and consumer-generated media continue to have a significant impact on advertising as consumers reliance on word-of-mouth in the decision-making process has increased significantly. The report showed that 92% of consumers trust friend’s recommendations above all other forms of advertising – up 18% since 2007, with trust in consumer opinions posted online up to 70%, a 15% increase in four years.

Sponsored ads on social networks, a new format included in the 2011 Nielsen survey were found to be trusted by just 36% of consumers, underlining that a paid strategy for social networks alone is not enough.

Consumers respond to social media symbols on TV
A new survey has reinforced the idea that social media and television are a perfect match. The survey, carried out by Accenture, found that one-third of US television viewers interacted with a social network ‘after seeing a social media symbol on the TV screen’, with the Facebook ‘Like’ being the most recognised symbol. Interestingly, US television viewers are more likely to recognise QR codes than Twitter hashtags.

Facebook tests and launches a range of new features
It’s not exactly news that Facebook is focusing on mobile – witness the purchase of Instagram – but it is interesting that they’re focussing on all mobile users. Recently, they’ve launched a new ‘Facebook for every phone’ app which creates a much better mobile experience for non-smartphone users, and in good news for brands, includes the ability to vist Facebook Pages within the app. It’s a move which shows Facebook is keen on mobile domination across the market.

Facebook has implemented a ‘listen’ button on artists’ fan Pages that lets users instantly stream songs from an artist’s catalogue. The feature could help make Facebook a go-to option for people looking for new music, similar to the Myspace in its glory days, but more likely will just integrate music more strongly into the existing Facebook product.

Facebook is also testing a new “trending articles” feature to highlight social reader articles within users’ News Feeds in an attempt to drive more users to Open Graph news apps. Particularly for smaller news sites, this could have a big impact on the number of people reading their site.

In addition, Facebook has delivered “real-time” analytics to Page admins for the first time. This overdue improvement provides new abilities to help marketers measure how well a post is performing on their Pages now, rather than 48 hours later, and modify their content (and advertising spend) accordingly.

It’s an interesting move now, as over the next few weeks, Facebook will introduce more granular metrics, measuring actions other than ‘Likes’, within its ads management platform. Facebook’s product manager for Pages Insights David Baser said the measurable actions “could be anything [such as] commenting or sharing a page post, claiming an offer, or, instead of just installing an app, actually using an app or doing things within an app.” The new feature titled “Action Measurement” will appear as a column and pie chart in Facebook’s Ads Manager and will help marketers tailor ads for relevant consumers.

It seems clear that Facebook are trying as hard as they can to get existing advertisers to spend more money with them – both through letting marketers to optimise the performance of their posts, and by making advertising more measurable.

Google products get the social treatment
YouTube aims to become more social and increase revenue by possibly introducing Google+ comments to the site. It could be a mutually beneficial move for Google – encouraging better quality comments on YouTube and also increased use of Google+.

In a smaller piece of news, Gmail users can expect to see recent photo and video thumbnails from Google+ when they hover over the “people” widget within their inbox.

Foursquare announce 20 million users and advertising platform launch
Foursquare announced last week that it now has 20 million users accounting for 2 billion checkins and adding another 10 million new members since it hit the 10 million mark in June 2011. Users were awarded with the ‘4sqDay 2012′ badge, which took them to a page reading:

In 2010, Foursquare fans declared April 16 4sqDay (4/4^2 – nerds after our own heart!). Two years and two billion check-ins later, you’re still why we get out of bed each day. Thanks to all 20 million of you for making us part of your lives. Happy 4sqDay!

Plans for a mid-June launch for a paid-media platform have surfaced which will give merchants the ability to promote a deal to check in at a given place. According to the reports, Foursquare is pitching brands to become launch partners, and it’s a move which we can definitely see being of particular interest to restaurant chains.

Tumblr to overtake blogs, will introduce advertising
Tumblr looks set to overtake ‘blog’ by the end of the year in Google searches. It’s not surprising then that the micro-blogging giant announced monetisation plans for the site with the obvious route being into paid advertising. 

Tumblr CEO David Karp has in the past dismissed the idea of using ads to monetise the site, but it looks like he has little alternative now – investors want a return on their dollar, and ads are by far the easiest large-scale way to monetise the site. Nonetheless, it will be a bespoke ad product, as rather than launching display ads, brands will be able to pay to promote their Tumblr posts on users’ dashboards.

Pinterest losing its interest
After its explosive growth in recent months, it seems Pinterest’s bubble may have burst and might now actually be losing users. Monthly active users of their Facebook app are down from 11.3 million on March 1 to just 8.3 million today. It’s likely that the hype around the photo-sharing/collecting site motivated many people to join who have now decided Pinterest is not their bag.

Quora and Path both raise funds and plan expansion
According to TechCrunch, Quora is set to raise between $30 – $50 million in its Series B fundraising, giving it a $400 million valuation. Co-founder Adam D’Angelo will also be investing up to $20 million of his own money along with other investors according to one source. 

Location-based app Path closed its Series B funding of ”more than $30 million” with investors including Sir Richard Branson, which values it at $250 million. In his email statement, Path CEO Dave Mortin noted the investors’ commitment to building Path “for the long term” with the funding being used for “international growth and expansion as well as user adoption”. It’s unclear whether he meant they would be spending money on advertising, or just on improving the product to boost user adoption.

Klout launches Brand Pages – ‘a new twist on influence’
Klout, the influence measurement company, is now topping 12 billion API calls a month – and has launched Brand Pages to try and work more with brands. According to Klout, the newly launched Brand Pages give ‘influencers a place to be recognised and have a direct impact on the brands they care about most’.

Red Bull have teamed up with Klout for the Beta launch and are offering their top advocates the chance to win a trip to the X Games or, more likely, some merchandise. It’s good to see Klout trying something new, but what they really need to work on is their influence measurement which could do with some work.

Brands tweeting and the Olympics
If you’re working for a brand which isn’t an official Olympic sponsor, even mentioning the Olympics on social media channels could get you in hot water. While Rax Lakhani makes a fair point that it will be impossible for the IOC to keep an eye on every tweet, but while the rules are clearly overbearing, it’s still an unnecessary risk to break them.

It was notable in the pre-Christmas period how little variety there was on brand social media accounts, with everyone talking about Christmas and little else, so it will be interesting to see how skilled community managers perform in posting content which deflects attention away from their competitors’ Olympic sponsorship, without breaking the rules.

In other Olympic news, the IOC has launched the nicely designed ‘Athlete’s Hub’ which will bring together social media updates from different athletes. While you could just follow them all on Twitter, this is an easier way to follow the Olympic stars, with less effort for the ordinary fan. Nice.

Honda ask people to give up Pinterest – sort of
The new Honda campaign for the CR-V strikes of one where somebody has come up with a decent pun – Pintermission – and built a campaign around it. The campaign revolves around offering active pinners $500 to give up Pinterest for a day, and instead go outside and do the things they’ve been pinning about. It even features personalised invitations and persuaded a few super-users to give Pinterest up for a day.

But as Adweek neatly put it:

The campaign is nicely designed and executed, but somewhat frustrating. If the only way your brand can relate to Pinterest is by dissing it, isn’t it disingenuous to build a whole campaign around it?

Quite.

Dr Pepper’s new Facebook Connect campaign
Dr Pepper have launched a new campaign called ‘The Best Day Of High School’ which creates a bespoke video for each user by connecting it up with their Facebook profile. Considering how long Facebook Connect has been around, it’s a little underwhelming.

Air New Zealand give consumers cashback for recommendations
UK-based Air New Zealand customers can earn £50 for every Twitter, Facebook, email or blog recommendation that turns into a premium economy booking. Consumers that register for the trial can earn cashback on bookings for the premium economy seats. Although the campaign will probably show impressive numbers, it will hard to prove it has convinced people to book who wouldn’t have otherwise. Looks like the marketing team may be winging it.

Fulham FC attempt Foursquare Super Swarm
Before their home game against Wigan on Saturday, Fulham attempted to unlock the Super Swarm badge for all those checking in on Foursquare. While this isn’t particularly innovative or interesting on its own when you consider there was a crowd of 20,000+ at the Cottage, Fulham also plan to introduce special offers on tickets and retail items throughout the season that you can only redeem with Foursquare.

Boris joins Sina Weibo
Boris Johnson’s campaign for re-election as Mayor of London has even seen him join Sina Weibo in a bid to win over London’s Chinese community. We don’t think we’re going out on too much of a limb to say Boris probably isn’t writing his updates…

Italian ‘blog killer’ law returns
In a quite incredible story, the Italian government is trying to pass a law so brilliantly ridiculous one could be mistaken for thinking Silvio Berlusconi was still Prime Minister.

The proposed law – which is designed to protect those libelled online – works like this:

In order to protect people from online defamation, this law states that each webmaster of whatever website must rectify within 48 hours (even if you’re a private blogger who just left for the weekend!) any page on the website itself, if somebody just tells him or her (how?) that they consider themselves wronged by that page. No discussion or reply allowed, no judge needed, and the fine for not “rectifying” within 2 days is 12K Euros [about $15,000].

Nuts. In other words, if I write a fact and somebody disputes it, I have to change what I’ve written. Looks like the trolls have finally won.

I’m going to be chairing two panels at the The Social Media for Customer Service Summit, which takes place in London on Monday and Tuesday next week.

The main problem with chairing panels at social media conferences is that most people agree with each other. When talking about social at a macro level the principles are largely the same, listen, be transparent – yawn yawn yawn. This gets trotted out over and over again and panelists tell the expectant audience that “it’s all about engagement” as if it is hot off the press information.

In fairness social media is a young industry that has been born out of a young industry (digital), and although the technology moves very quickly, human nature doesn’t. It’s my guess that a panelist at a social media conference in 3 years time could say “it’s all about having a conversation with your consumers” and they’d probably still be right.

But this doesn’t make for a great panel debate unfortunately. So I need your help.

The first panel is called “Improve your Customer Retention – If you build it, they will come. But how do you persuade them to stay?” with Georgina Wald, Head of Corporate Comms at Domino’s, Sue Roscoe, Customer Focus Manager at QVC, Joshua Marsh, CEO at Conversocial and Anita Hudson, Digital Manager, Social Media at Lloyds TSB.

What should I ask them to get a fiery debate going? I’m more than happy to credit you with the question (unless it’s sexual).

The second panel is “An effective listening and monitoring programme “Prick up your social ears” with David Parkinson General Manager, Social and Digital Engagement at Nissan and Naomi Trickey, Sales Director EMEA at Brandwatch.

David and I have been discussing recording the session and selling CD’s afterwards on twitter and perhaps even a Glastonbury performance to follow up but nothing has been set in stone yet.

In our discussions with marketers around the world, one of the questions we hear on a regular basis is:

What advice would you give to a brand that’s just starting out in social media?

It’s a question that’s come up again a few times in recent days, so we thought it would be helpful to share our ‘beginner’s guide’ to social media marketing here too.

This guide introduces two key areas for consideration:

• Our 10 guiding principles, or ‘commendments’, of social media marketing;
• Our 8-step process for preparing a powerful social media strategy.

The guide has been designed with relative newcomers to social media marketing in mind, but the principles it sets out should be equally useful to those who work with social media every day.

We’d love to hear your advice for people starting out in social media too, so please do share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.

And if you’d like a PDF copy of this guide, please drop us an email and we’ll happily send you a copy.