Image courtesy of McKinsey. In order to use social media to influence purchasing habits you need to embed it at key customer touchpoints. Using  McKinsey’s customer journey model as a base, we’ve looked at how and where you can use social media at key customer touch points. Initial consideration. What’s happening at this stage? MORE >>

Image by dobrych via Flickr. The latest data from the Office of National Statistics n the UK shows that, for the first time ever, over half of adults accessed social networking sites in 2011. This is a significant landmark, and the rate of growth is impressive and it shows the importance of social networking in the lives of British adults. MORE >>

Following on from the success of our social media monitoring tools review earlier this year, we’ve been testing  nine of the leading social media monitoring tools in order to assess how effective they are at identifying influencers. Download our social media influencers report 2010 to find out. MORE >>

Image via Wikipedia. Last week we looked a ranking of the top ten brands on Facebook globally, based on the number of people who ‘like’ them. The same dataset, from Famecount , can be used to look at brands on Twitter and, unlike with Facebook, it throws up some unexpected findings. It’s a museum: @Tate. Brand. Followers. 106,881. MORE >>

Image by Kaptain Kobold via Flickr. LEGO is a brand that many people are very passionate about, a brand people love and we’ve written before about how they use segmentation to engage their consumer base from children to enthusiasts in an innovative way. In a big way. Users can contribute their ideas by tweeting with the hashtag #legoclick. MORE >>