It only took a decade for new technology to completely disrupt businesses, markets and entire industries. With the emergence of social media organisations had to adapt to a much faster rate of continuous change in how society interacts, communicates, receives and finds information. Furthermore, the rapid embracement of smartphones and tablets with internet access anytime, anywhere has brought another challenge for brands as they are now required to act 24/7. Social, digital and mobile have changed our personal and professional lives to a massive extent. It’s an exciting era, isn’t it? According to a new report by We Are Social the near future is going to be even more so.

Just last week, agency We Are Social published their Global Digital Statistics for 2014. It’s an interesting read and I thought you’d find it useful too (whether out of curiosity or to help you plan your social media activities for the year), so I decided to share some of the report’s highlights.

The 180+ pages report is especially valuable for global campaigns as it covers key statistics, data and behavioural indicators for every country on Earth and presents in-depth analysis for 24 of the world's largest economies, including for example Germany, the UK, the USA, Australia, Brazil and China.

Over the past few decades our world has faced some remarkable changes due to the rapid development of new technology and the Internet. However, a few years back, a new era began, an era where ordinary people have a 'say' on every possible matter, anytime, anywhere - the emergence of social media has altered our lives enormously by giving everyone the opportunity to be a publisher and a communicator. This, in turn, has had a huge impact on the Public Relations practice, which has always been concerned with communicating and building relationships with various publics.

How and why social media affected the PR industry is the topic of my second book “Social Media and the Rebirth of PR: The Emergence of Social Media as a Change Driver for PR”, published by Anchor Academic Publishing.

The book covers the fundamentals and the development of PR and social media over the years, thereby emphasising the differences between PR now and PR before the emergence of social media. It not only describes how exactly social media altered the PR industry as a whole, but also how communications professionals are practicing PR using social media in their work and private lives as well.

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Over the years, social media marketing has become one of the largest advertising markets in the world. Marketing expert Heidi Cohen reports that over 90% of Inc. 500 companies use at least one form of social media platform. Even more telling, 62% of those say that social media is at least somewhat necessary to their growth.

The growing trend towards social media and the sheer depth of communication it allows between brands and consumers hasn’t escaped the eye of the online gaming industry. Numerous bingo sites have tried to leverage the power of social media, but only a few have survived to this day. Cashcade’s Foxy Bingo is one such brand creating marketing that “goes beyond just a sales pitch”.

Over the last few years two relatively new business philosophies have become the trendy buzzwords in the corporate space – social media and sustainability. The rise of social media has provoked a complex cultural and communications shift in the way people share information and participate in conversations, resulting in the empowerment of the individual to demand change as well as to expect responsibility and social consciousness from brands to strike the triple bottom line balance.

This new social economy is based on engagement, relationships and mutual trust where relevance to the individual is the main currency for meaningful communications. Thus, innovation has become crucial for companies to reach, educate and inspire this new consumer about sustainability.

However, educating and inspiring this connected generation to embrace sustainability has proven to be a major challenge for brands. To a large extent this challenge is due to the fact that companies have difficulty making use of the right avenues to communicate their efforts and why they are of such importance for each stakeholder.

To truly reach people in the social economy brands are now required to heavily rely on those new tools and channels that the community has embraced so quickly – social media.

Even though social media has been around for a decade, for many companies it still feels like the “Wild Wild West”. Although maturing, the path to becoming a true social business by fully embracing disruptive technology seems just as challenging now as it did a few years back. According to the latest 'The State of Social Business 2013' report by Altimeter Group businesses are still unsure about the role social media plays for their enterprises, beyond just using it for marketing and communications.

How I see it though is that even when it comes to marketing and comms purposes social media is still a nascent area for companies, especially for small businesses.

For those struggling to embrace social media, here’s where the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations – the UK professional body for PR practitioners) comes to help.

Just last Friday the CIPR’s social media advisory panel (#CIPRSM) revealed an updated version of its Social Media Best Practice Guide. It’s a 30-page free document that covers core principles of social media and offers advice on dos and don’ts, planning, legal and security considerations and measurement.