For the past two months at my new job I have heard the questions  “How would social media prove useful for my business?” “Why should my business be on social media at all, what are the advantages?”; “Why should we put that required effort and what would the results be?” like a hundred times. Small as well as large, B2B as well as B2C companies want to know the answers.  

For every one of them it is of course an individual case – what one might benefit, the other might not. There are however some very sound ‘generic’ reasons that any business should carefully consider when making the decision whether to use social media for marketing or not.

To help you what to start with, I want to show you this infographic by Carousel30, which summarizes some of the findings of the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, conducted for the fourth time by Social Media Examiner (one of my absolute favourite social media experts that I eagerly follow and fully recommend).

A lot of research and reports about the PR industry and social media have been published lately. The newest one I came across is Burson-Marsteller's Global Social Media Check-Up 2012.

Burson-Marsteller is one of the leading PR consultancies in the world and this is their third annual study into how the Fortune Global 100 are using social media and adapting to the always changing online landscape. 

The findings show that companies have learnt a lot since 2010 and they now feel more comfortable around social media. The Fortune Global 100 are also engaging much more and are creating a lot more digital content. 

Here are the top 5 results of the study: 

Did you know that Pinterest is the fastest growing social network ever? Only after 2 years since its launch it now has ca. 12 million users.

And it continues to grow rapidly! Remember my first post about it a few months ago? Well, there I said that everyone was talking about Pinterest all the time, but the truth is everyone is STILL talking about it all the time. 

Pinterest is definitely not going anywhere, so the sooner you learn to effectively use it, the sooner you'll be able to enjoy its benefits for your business or brand. 

To help you with this process, I've put together a list of a some very good inforgraphics below. You'll find there everything you need to know about Pinterest - from user demographics to marketing strategies. 

I’ve always been interested in trying out new social media platforms and I’m seldom really impressed with a particular one. Pinterst was (still is) certainly the case, but now there is another one that grabbed my attention – Twylah. It’s a comprehensive, but up-to-the-point visual representation of the Twitter ‘You'.

To have a profile on Twylah you need an invite as it is still in beta, but it only takes a few days and it is worth waiting for (it's also free!). Here’s my Twylah page so that you can have an idea of what it looks like. Basically it shows all my trending topics, i.e. the keywords I use the most, which obviously are Social Media, Facebook, PR etc.

As it says on the website, Twylah is "the best way to share your tweets" as it "bring your brand message into focus, extends the life of your tweets, and helps you get discovered beyond Twitter." Impressive, huh?