The number of Australian businesses and individuals on social media channels slipped over the past year, but paid advertising, mobile and stronger usage trends show a vital communications and engagement channel, the latest Sensis report claims.

Social media insights are not only helping GE Capital’s Australian team better understand how customers relate to its products and services, they’re also driving more targeted, real-time marketing campaigns.

Social marketing and advertising vendor, Brand Networks, has handed over US$50 million to acquire fellow social platform player, Shift, making it the largest deal in its category to date.

You don’t build a brand by advertising, you build it by fostering customer advocacy, Philips’ VP and chief marketing officer, Damien Cummings, claims.

CMOs hold a rightful place as their organisation’s chief customer advocate and change agent because digital transformation has put them there, Lithium’s global chief claims.

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.