You don't have to agree. You may even disagree. And you certainly don't have to change how you use social media based on what you read, though you might.

Sometimes, marketers can find great value in listening to the views of their peers, especially if they come across experiences that mirror their own. This was the simple, “come to the table” intent of Hubspot as it asked leading marketers about the virtues of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Hubspot was particularly interested in probing which platform marketers prefer for live engagement.

We live in a world where timing is everything. You brush your teeth at a certain time, leave the house to get to work at a certain time and have a schedule of after-work activities you must adhere to. When it comes to marketing your business, this concept is no different. While it may seem like publishing social media posts whenever you create them is enough to drive eyes your way, the fact of the matter is there are certain times of day when your posts will receive optimal attention.

Determining your optimal video length is one of the first and most important steps advertisers and businesses need to negotiate during the video planning and production stages. Video length will determine the informational scope of the included content and will narrow down an appropriate storyline and video focus. You can't, for example, run a truly informative and engaging how-to product video in a six second bumper ad. Such a campaign needs a solid minute or more to fully flesh out how a product or service works, consider this Nifty quick vid to see what we mean.

If you're on the sensitive side, you might consider it a verbal spanking – and one that stings.

But the people at Hubspot have marketers' best interests at heart and want them to catch up with social media trends (the assumption being that marketers have fallen behind the curve). It may help to keep Hubspot's agenda in mind as the industry leader admonishes:

So what do you get when you ask 10 different SEO companies to name the most common mistakes they continue to see businesses of all sizes and specialties continue to make in their quest to get noticed first?

Every marketer learns early on: no matter how robust sales may be at the moment, your product or service must be marketed to new customers at all times. New customers represent the future lifeblood of a business.

Remember when marketing simply meant creating amazing advertisements that people would love so much they couldn't wait to buy your product? In fact, you may not remember because this theory has long since gone by the wayside. Way back when, marketing and sales were essentially the same thing ; professionals in this field were tasked with creating memorable pitches that would serve their clients for the moment -- just long enough for them to sign on the dotted line.

You don't have to know the numbers to know mobile advertising is exploding. Then again, a little context never hurts: advertisers spent about $72 billion on digital ads in 2016 and this number is expected to balloon to $82 billion by the end of this year and more than $113 billion by 2020.

Marketers have long considered what they do to be an art, but how they do it has morphed into a science.

This seismic shift requires merging marketing's best practices with data science and predictive analytics. And this merger might require the addition of new team members who excel at their respective specialty.

Data runs the world. It drives the decisions we make, the people meet and the things we do. To ignore it would be ignoring potential income streams; to misunderstand it could lead to expensive mistakes and missed opportunities.

Today's marketing world isn't fixed on the creative outlet it once was. Rather, it's a data-driven field where numbers and behaviors come together, telling a story of the whole brand's journey, telling customers' tales from the initial introduction to the point they become loyal buyers.