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Social media is growing increasingly important in online advertising campaigns, with 72% of marketers planning to invest in the sector this year, according to a survey from the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

For the first time, mobile marketing and social media have made it into the top 10 most-important marketing concepts. However, despite the sector’s importance, 'social media',

'Twitter' and 'social networking' are the top three buzzwords marketing execs are most tired of hearing.

"It's no surprise to see social media ranking high in the minds of most marketers," says Tom Anderson, managing partner at Anderson Analytics, which commissioned the survey.

"It may be one of the buzzwords executives are most tired of hearing, but they realise its importance and are determining how to best leverage it for their companies this year."

The report shows that Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular social networks, with 43% of execs saying their company has a presence on these sites.

A third have Twitter accounts, while 20% have YouTube channels. Just 5% are on MySpace.

Overall, marketers still prefer offline to online advertising, with respondents on average planning to spend around 45% of their budgets online compared with 55% for offline.

However, this varies depending on the size of the company. Firms with less than 2,000 employees are spending 48% of their budgets online compared with just 30% for businesses with more than 2,000 staff.

Two-thirds of marketers are more optimistic about business opportunities this year than last year, while only 6% are less positive.

In 2010, firms are more likely to increase their marketing budget and less likely to make job cuts than last year.

editorial@strategyeye.com