Brands and executives that haven’t yet realised social media as a new way of working or seen its potential beyond customer support could be missing out on an opportunity to help their organisations grow.

The new content-heavy digital age is pulling publishers away from traditional, marketing strategies towards building strategic and highly targeted communities using their own channels.

With video advertising growing at a rapid pace, the pressure is on brands to look towards more innovative ways of generating shareable content.

Brands that don’t interact with customers on social, or who fail to build an emotional and consistent connection through channels like Facebook and Twitter, are selling their customer experience strategy short.

Social content aggregator, Stackla, has struck a partnership with Hootsuite to enable users to harness its content marketing tools within the social relationship platform’s dashboard.

Social media is increasingly becoming an important marketing and customer care tool for brands looking to better engage with today’s digitally savvy and highly demanding consumer.

Online communities are proving to be incredibly effective at bringing together people of similar interests – even those who face social stigma and isolation.

Ad technology platform provider, Marin Software, has acquired social advertising player, SocialMoov, for US$18.75 million. The deal, one of the first in the ad tech space in 2015, comes off the back of a huge year for mergers and acquisitions across the industry, according to a new report.

Marketers are ramping up spending on social and mobile activities and capabilities, and see CRM, mobile apps and marketing analytics as core technologies for building customer engagement, according to the 2015 State of Marketing Report from Salesforce.

ANZ has partnered with its new ambassador and world number one tennis player, Novak Djokovic, on a tennis-themed social media campaign aimed at raising money for charity.

The rise of social, mobile and location technology presents an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to engage in targeted and service-led marketing.

A new social media monitoring tool created at the University of Queensland is aiming to help marketing and PR professionals better track relevant stories related to their brand or area of interest as they unfold.

MediaMath has acquired social advertising management tool, Upcast Social, to further build out its digital advertising technology platform for brands and agencies.

Instagram has begun rolling out its advertising platform to Australian users 12 months after the social media site launched its inaugural offering in the US.

Insurance brand, AAMI, claims its decision to up the content marketing ante with a real-time social media approach is already driving more positive digital engagement.

Optus is claiming to be the first global brand to use Facebook’s trending feature for a consumer campaign that relies on posting fresh content daily to the social media site.

An integrated and scalable video management platform is giving the 12 Week Body Transformation team the confidence to rapidly expand its offering for members while opening new social and marketing opportunities.

The role of marketing is increasingly being driven by what happens with the customer after they have purchased a product, and CMOs must take more responsibility for operations as a result.

Getting Australians to talk about sport isn’t hard. But bringing them to your website to do it takes a little effort. This was the task for Fox Sports at the launch of its sports community site, The Crowd, in February this year.

Charity giving community portal, JustGiving, has launched a ‘Care’ social button for donation sites in a bid to make the experience more personal for consumers.

A real-time social media program around the World Cup that has triggered a 400 per cent engagement rise for Sportsbet’s Twitter channel couldn’t have succeeded without an integrated marketing approach.