Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have revolutionised the marketing departments of many brands, but that doesn’t mean that these tools are applicable to all business types. Nor does it mean that social media can effortlessly convert a pig’s ear of a commercial venture into a lucrative sow’s purse. It takes work and it takes effort, but it also takes the right kind of people, and the right kind of business.

Small business owners (SBOs) have perhaps struggled more than any other to successfully implement a social media strategy into their marketing. This is particularly true if the SBO is limited to a local audience for trade. Indeed, a 2012 study has revealed that while 87 percent of SBOs agree that word-of-mouth and customer referrals are an effective marketing tactic, just 32 percent feel the same way about social media, a drop of ten full percentage points from earlier in the year.

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Did you know that in the U.S. Facebook and Twitter are the most effective social networks for brands targeting business to consumer (B2C) channels?

Chinese users are three times more likely than Americans to make a purchasing decision based on user-generated content on social networks (for example, comments), 35 percent of Irish users access social networks via their smartphones and, in the UK, one-fifth of all Facebook users earn more than £50,000 per annum.

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Making social media work for your brand takes planning, time and effort. It takes work. You need to put in the hours, and you have to implement a winning strategy – and stick with it.

In many ways, a good social media campaign is somewhat like throwing a party. To mark the occasion, you need to decide on who you want to attend and when and where it will take place. You need to decide on a theme. You must establish clear goals and objectives and, critically, prepare the tools that will allow you to measure success.

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2012 was a huge year for social media – its biggest yet – with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and (gasp) Google+ all marching to record numbers of global active users.

All of which, of course, is good news for social media marketers and their clients, who have invested heavily in these platforms. The smart money is still going into the pockets of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but which of these thoroughbreds is winning the race?

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Digital marketers have placed content marketing as their most important priority for 2013, ahead of conversation rate optimisation, with mobile optimisation their single-most exciting digital priority of this year, says a new report.

Conversely, social media, the digital marketer’s overwhelming favourite in 2012, is very much on the decline.

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In exploring the tensions between art and science in shaping the modern marketer, B2B content marketers Eloqua teamed up with creative agency JESS3 to build an infographic exploring the road to modern marketing.

From the door-to-door salesman to today’s modern social media maven, marketing has progressed to a truly digital field.

A full 75% of marketers agree that social media is changing how they develop marketing strategy and plans (actually, we’re kind of surprised that percentage isn’t higher).

Check out the infographic, below.

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2012 was a very big year for social media.

Facebook’s IPO and Instagram acquisition, Twitter’s growing importance as a news and communications tool around the world, LinkedIn’s march to 200 million users and Pinterest’s rapid rise all dominated the headlines, and many top brands capitalised with innovative marketing campaigns and promotions.

However, in the world of advertising, people rarely remember the winners. The losers, however, often get talked about for months, with foot-in-mouth campaigns and attempts at damage control by the likes of McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, American Apparel and others this year leaving millions of people shaking their heads, wondering just how did they let this happen.

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More than half of U.S. business to business (B2B) marketers plan to increase spending on their social media budget in 2013, reveals a new study.

56 percent of respondents to BtoB Magazine‘s 2013 Outlook: Marketing Priorities And Plans survey said that their marketing spend on channels such as Twitter and Facebook will rise this year, with social media being favoured above both search (52.5 percent) and mobile (a surprisingly low 35.5 percent).

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Did you know that 80 percent of companies are planning to incorporate social media into their customer service strategies in 2013?

And with good reason – the public visibility of an enquiry or complaint made online gives the consumer more power than ever, and brands that are slow to respond or (worse) ignore these support channels altogether are likely to pay a very high price indeed.

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Did you know that more than one quarter (27 percent) of Australian businesses use social media for marketing?

Facebook leads the way (86 percent) ahead of Twitter (32 percent) and LinkedIn (25 percent), and more than half (51 percent) of Australian SMBs allow their employees to use social media at work.

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