The Online Video revolution is still in full swing but here comes Social Media

The proportion of advertising budgets set aside for social media strategies has been revealed in a new chart.

Compiled by Marketing Sherpa, the report indicated that 11 per cent of the average internet budget is assigned to social networking campaigns by internet marketing consultants and others and the company predicted that this would increase throughout 2010.

It was also seen that use of sites such as Facebook have surpassed search engine optimisation techniques, which demand ten per cent of all monies, while display advertising took six per cent and pay-per-click took 21 per cent.

The majority of the budget (27 per cent) was spent on business websites and email received 19 per cent of the cash available.

Research director Sergio Balegno said: "While email and search have been online marketing's workhorse tactics in recent years, websites have become the hub of marketing strategy for many organisations."

He went on to add that this means web page content is used as a "destination point" for all users coming to the firm through search, email and other advertising campaigns.

Meanwhile, Marketing Sherpa's reporter Adam Sutton proposed two methods for making the most of social networks such as Twitter - ensuring that relevant content is linked to and be interesting so that people want to share information with friends.