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Getting in on the social media game will be a lot easier with a thorough study of all the options available to you. But for now, you can always bluff! Here are some facts to get you chatting by the water cooler.

The trend continues: this year, digital marketing will become even more of a priority for the majority of companies. Around two-thirds, or 68% of client-side respondents to a recent eConsultancy survey have reported increases in their digital budgets for the next 12 months. In even better news for agencies, those agencies surveyed reported that their clients are also seeking o increase their digital marketing budgets in 2012 (75%).

Big brother is watching you. Right now, the US Homeland Security might be monitoring your public tweets, especially if you have an upcoming trip to the United States.

This Sunday, The NY Giants and the New England Patriots will be battling for victory in the 46th Superbowl. People are hedging their bets on the winners as we speak, but there’s one potential winner that has been overlooked: social media. The marketers who use these social media platforms to their best advantage are poised to win in a big way on Sunday night. Last year, fans engaged with the game at an all-new level. Social media now plays a huge role in the way we engage with traditional media like TV, and sports coverage.

“Pinterest” is the latest buzzword going round the web. It seems like in the space of just a few weeks that Pinterest has risen from a small niche site to the platform to be in. It’s trendy. It’s the cool place to hang out. And of course with that comes the marketing crowd. In the space of a couple of weeks Pinterest has gone from “doesn’t matter” to “why aren’t you on it?”.

As 2012 gets underway in earnest, email marketing may have taken a beating in the last year… we think though, that it’s down but not out. Despite the best efforts of some naysayers who claim that email marketing has died a bloody death and social media is it’s replacement, email will continue to be the single most effective marketing medium for the average small business. Recent reports suggest that 64% of consumers prefer to receive promotional information from retailers via email instead of social media. Email campaigns have also been proven to convert customers to leads at a higher rate than social media does on it’s own.

Twitter is a platform that a lot of business owners feel pressured to conquer, and it’s likely that you yourself have given in to that pressure in recent months and have made a stab at it. And why not? Everyone seems to be using it these days, and you can’t go 5 minutes on the news without a Twitter conversation being mentioned or public opinion trends being fished out of the Twitter machine. It’s an interesting platform to have a presence on- that much is true. But a lot of people start to notice that their hard work on Twitter does not seem to be paying off. Maybe the engagement isn’t as they had hoped or the followers are not building as expected. Traffic isn’t increasing to their site. So what’s wrong? Here are a few reasons Twitter might not be working for some businesses:

Heard the hype about inbound marketing but not sure what to make of it? Well Hubspot have provided us with some very interesting case studies to examine. For example, a joint research project from some MBA students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Babson College discovered that inbound marketing efforts improved sales and performance for their clients.

Last year, we had some really breakthrough moments for social media. Who can forget the much-hyped launch of Google+, the new Facebook timeline, Charlie Sheen’s fall from grace and the death of Steve Jobs? We had the rise of twitter use for businesses, and the development of location based marketing. QR codes became inexplicably trendy, and Instagram turned everyone into a professional photographer. In figures, there were some memorable moments too:

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