You probably already knew that social networking was popular in the United Kingdom, certainly if you live there, but until now you might not have been aware just how much time is spent using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook in the UK.

A new study from Experian has revealed that 22 percent of all time spent online by adult UK internet users last year involved social media, equating to a heady 13 minutes in a single hour.

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A new study of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) has revealed that these firms are spending the largest portion of their budgets on email marketing, committing significantly less of their financial resources to marketing on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

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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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Did you know that 64 percent of community managers work more than 40 hours each week, earning an average salary of $57,732.77?

The role of the community manager as it’s defined today is reactively new, but the history of the position can be traced back to the early days of the internet, when system operators, or “sysops”, developed, grew and managed communities online. Today, this role is often the responsibility of the social media manager, or their team, but it’s very much par for the course for Fortune 500 and other larger companies to hire one or more individuals to focus exclusively on this increasingly-important work.

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In less than a decade, social networking has rapidly integrated itself into almost every aspect of our personal and professional lives, and a new report has revealed the extent to which this phenomenon has been adopted around the world.

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project surveyed twenty-one nations and discovered that Britain leads the world in social media use, with 52 percent of its citizens reporting that they use platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, placing the country ahead of the U.S. (50 percent), Russia (50 percent), the Czech Republic (49 percent) and Spain (49 percent).

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In less than a decade, social media has rapidly integrated itself into our everyday personal and professional lives, with seemingly no corner of the planet untouched by its infectious charms.

But is there still room for growth in this exciting sector, or has the space plateaued? How many social networks do we use? Are niche social networking sites the way forward? And how are consumers engaging with social brands?

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More than three-quarters of U.S. marketers say that better customer engagement is the number one business objective within their social media strategy, according to a new report.

However, almost all marketers still believe that social presence, measured by the number of followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook and other channels, is the top metric for evaluating a brand’s effectiveness.

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Companies in the Fortune Global 100, an index which tracks the largest corporates in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, received a total of some 10,400,132 online mentions during a month-long period, and the majority of those mentions were on Twitter.

Indeed, 82 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies have at least one Twitter account, top amongst all social networks, and each company was mentioned an average of 55,970 times on Twitter.

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A new study has revealed a shocking disconnect in how businesses are using social media to liaise with customers, respond to feedback and manage complaints.

Almost two in five companies (39 percent) do not track their social media responses at all, and more than half (55 percent) ignore all customer feedback on Twitter and Facebook, largely because they have no process in place to respond.

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A new study has revealed that while an alarming nine out of ten Americans (93 percent) say that companies fail to exceed their customer service expectations, those that use social media for support, while far more vocal, wield greater influence and are likely to spend substantially more.

In their third Global Customer Service Barometer, American Express explored customer attitudes and preferences towards consumer service in the U.S. and ten other countries, and noted that almost one in five customers (17 percent) had used social media at least once in the past 12 months to obtain a service response. While a minority, this group of consumers is actively engaged and vocal about the brands they choose and the service that they receive, but are loyal to businesses that exceed their expectations – social media users are willing to pay a 21 percent premium on brands that deliver great service, compared to just 11 percent for those who do not use social media.

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