There have been many questions about the effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool and whether it adds some weight to search results. According to Danny Sullivan, both Google and Bing have added many social search features over the past year.

To get answers on whether either of the major search engines were using social signals to rank regular search results, he sent Bing and Google six questions about how they use social data from Twitter and Facebook with a special emphasis on trying to understand if and how that data influenced regular web search results.

Here are the responses to his email and some takeaways. » Read more: Elements of Social Media that aid Search Results

Many of the larger brands have taken to social media with very little resistance. They started out slowly and threw some serious marketing dollars on it without knowing what they were doing.

Today, these big brands are aware that social media is a promotional tool that unifies the other marketing activities that they engage in. Additionally, it also helps them get the voice of their customers and connect with them at a closer level.

There are, however, some recurring misconceptions about social media and what it entails. Here are 10 of them that we, as internet marketers, should be aware of: » Read more: 10 Social Media Misconceptions debunked

Social bookmarking sites are tools that online users can use to store online content. Think of a social bookmarking site as an online file cabinet which you can access or anyone can access (if you choose to). Sites like this deliver two benefits. First: Links to your websites from these sites get you link juice that the search engines give you (limited) credit for. Second: People may search for content about your products and visit your websites.

In any case, here’s a list of the top 20 social bookmarking sites that you should include in your marketing outreach. » Read more: Top 20 Social Bookmarking Sites

Jamie Turner from the 60-second marketer wrote this neat article on the essential components of a social media press release. With so many free and paid PR platforms available, a digital press release requires certain rules to be followed while publishing content about your brand on them.

I’ve reproduced the article here in its entirety. Enjoy!

» Read more: 10 Elements of a Social Media Press Release

I came across Google’s Internet Stats, a free service that they launched last year that collates the latest industry facts and insights. This information is collected from third party sources covering a range of topics from economic and media trends to consumer behavior and technology.

As I read through them, I thought how good it would be if some of the social media facts were all collected in one place.

Well, here they are… » Read more: 13 Social Media facts from Google Internet Stats