Mark McCann, managing director, marketing agency Oliver Ireland

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube – social media channels are many and varied, changing on an almost daily basis – but social media has grown up from its anarchic “Wild West” beginnings. Customers have begun to expect social as standard from brands, even from small companies – and this evolving frontier still holds many challenges for marketers.

Some companies have internal employees with the skills to manage their social media channels, but they ...