What’s been happening in the marketplace this week that you need to know about?

This week I thought I’d start my blog with something that is indisputably relevant to all of us in the Marketing and Communications world. Michael Page has just published their salary survey and market insight report for 2012, and good news, their results are positive! 66.7% of those surveyed are expecting to pay bonuses or improve salaries this year and 46.1% expect to increase their marketing department headcount. Digital is also dominating the Marketing landscape, although that’s not so surprising. For more statistics and for Michael Page’s predicted trends for 2012 check out their website.

It was rumoured last month that Facebook were experimenting with a ‘highlighting posts’ feature. Well this has now been confirmed, the social networking site have made highlighting posts official. Facebook members will be able to use this promotional tool to help increase the number people who see and read their posts. However, this new feature isn’t free, you’re going to have to pay to promote your posts. Samantha Murphy’s article gives you a great run down on Facebook’s new tool, how it works and how much it’s going to cost. I recommend you give this a read.

In last week’s blog I wrote about Social Benchmark’s Survey which reported that YouTube was the least used social media platform out of the big four, with only 41% of companies using the website. Based on these results, the Guardian can therefore be seen as going against the grain by choosing to push their YouTube presence in the hope of boosting their advertising revenues. This is all part of their move to adopt a digital first strategy, coinciding with their popular ‘Three Little Pigs' campaign. Will their YouTube approach pay off? Only time will tell.

Have you heard of Viddy? It’s the new video editing and sharing app, ‘Instagram for video,’ and has become very popular especially after Mark Zuckerberg joined up in April this year. Mashable have put together a list of  6 brands that they believe are ‘getting it right’ on Viddy. If you’re not familiar with the social site then check this out, Viddy is a great way to interact with the world, it’s no surprise people have been signing up fast!

Now we all know social media Marketing can be a tricky to master. McDonalds are a great example of this, after their infamous #McDStories. Undeterred, the fast food giant has now launched a game-based mobile advertising campaign where customers can use their smart phones as a controller and play McDonalds games on billboards. If they win they are able to claim a free food item at the nearest restaurant. For details on McDonald's mobile games take a look at Carol Tice’s article. Will these games result in positive feedback on Facebook and Twitter, or will they be another social media disaster like their Hashtag campaigns? What do you think?

That’s it for this week. Have a great bank holiday everyone and enjoy the lovely long weekend!