With social media marketing evolving at a rapid pace, it’s essential to stay current on the latest industry trends. Here are some interesting findings from recent social media studies:

Survey results from a recent Deloitte study (2009 Tribalization of Business Study), point to some key challenges that organizations are facing as they move toward integrating online communities into their social media strategy.

Here are the top three areas respondents identified as obstacles:

• Keeping visitors engaged:  30%


• Getting people to join:  24%


• Encouraging return visits to the online community:  21%

In addition, the majority of respondents agreed that the following are key business outcomes for their online communities:

• Increase word-of-mouth:  38%


• Increase customer loyalty:  34%


• Increase brand awareness:  30%

With the recent integration of Twitter and Facebook with Microsoft’s Bing, there is no doubt that social media has b