This article is by Avi Savar, founder and chief creative officer of Big Fuel, a social media agency that is part of Publicis Groupe.

Companies sometimes gripe that social media is useless as a branding tool.

For marketers, converting messages into transactions is the Holy Grail, but if they don’t quickly materialize through new media outlets, that’s no reason to throw in the towel. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other outlets are constantly evolving and experimentation is necessary to find success.

Once we accept that “social” does not equal “transactional” we’ll all be a lot more adept at using it in 2012.

Three trends and tools to watch in the coming year:

Read the full article on forbes.com!