L2 Think Tank’s Social Platforms 2013 study, covering 247 brands across 15 different social platforms, offers a deep dive into the current moment in social media.

Insights include the ROI of social media vs. more traditional marketing tactics like paid search and email; the performance difference of Instagram video and Vine; and engagement levels on Twitter vs. Instagram vs. Facebook and more.

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When you’re considering a college placement, what’s the most important “must have” on your list?

A recent study of 7,000 high school students revealed that students are increasingly choosing colleges with social media clout, which means that the institutions that are managing their social presence on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook better than their rivals have an exponentially greater chance of attracting the highest quality of applicants.

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Social media is more prevalent than you might think in Africa – it is, after all, the world’s second-largest continent.

New research by strategic communication agency Cerebra examines the social media and social business practices of Africa’s top 200 companies, ranked according to revenue.

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Have you heard? Social media is changing the world.

In business, brands are using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to raise awareness of product and services, drive engagement and boost website footfall and sales. Increasingly, they’re also using these channels for customer service, with firms that excel in this area often enjoying a trickle-down effect on their bottom line.

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What do you do when you have a problem with a brand’s product or service?

You go online, right?

You’re not alone. Close to six in ten (57 percent) of customers search for a solution online before taking any further action, and they’re increasingly reaching for a brand’s social media outposts. Almost half of social media users (47 percent) have received customer care on a channel such as Twitter or Facebook, and 37 percent now prefer customer service through social media rather than by telephone.

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When you Like or follow a brand on a social media channel such as Facebook and Twitter, what is the thing that they do that you hate the most?

Disruptive Communications asked more than 1,000 UK consumers what was most likely to damage their opinion of a brand that uses social media, and discovered that poor spelling and lousy grammar was the worse offence, with 42.5 percent citing this as their biggest turn-off.

“Salesy” updates (24.9 percent) and posting too frequently (12.8 percent) were also negatives for some customers.

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On his popular site Vincos Blog, Italian social media expert Vincenzo Cosenza tracks the popularity of social networks across the globe.

One of his projects includes a fascinating infographic that examines the rate at which different people adopt different social media networks, from Twitter to LinkedIn.

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Social advertising has become a seriously big business. How big? Ad revenue on Twitter alone is forecast to reach $950 million next year, and more than half of all advertisers have said that they plan to increase their social advertising budget in 2013, with an increasingly significant portion going towards mobile ads.

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Do we share too much online?

Nine in ten adults think we do, and when you look at the statistics it’s hard not to agree. Millions write status updates each and every day about their health, love life and alcohol use, and a startlingly high number of folks tweet and Facebook whenever they leave their house.

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Shocker: the 74+ demographic is the fastest growing among social networks.

The following infographic, created by Wishpond, illustrates how senior citizens are using social media and why it’s important to consider that demographic’s digital presence in your social media marketing strategy.

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