Social media is quite the valuable tool in an inbound marketer’s tool belt. As social networks continue to grow, evolve, and sometimes fall out of relevancy, we must always stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the world of social media. Any inbound marketer can tell you how effective and inexpensive a well-run social media campaign can be, and that's exactly why it’s a must-have tool in your marketing arsenal. So this week’s round-up will fill you in on all of the latest changes in social media that you’ll need to know to keep that edge. Enjoy!

Facebook Holding an Event to Show Off a 'New Look For News Feed' on March 7th, From The Next Web

It's been quite some time since Facebook held a major event to show off something like a 'new look'. This time, it's all about the new look for the Facebook news feed. Facebook has sent out invites to press about the big event scheduled for March 7th. There are talks about the news feed moving toward a more image-centric design that's similar to something like Flipboard. This could be an interesting change that may affect how marketers engage and interact with their current Facebook fans. Marketers should keep an eye out for this event and get some insight on how this new look may impact their social media campaigns. Read the full article at The Next Web.

What HP’s 1 Million LinkedIn Followers Means for Marketers, From LinkedIn Blog

HP has officially become the first company to draw in one million followers to their LinkedIn page. This is a huge win for HP because these aren’t followers you would find on Twitter or Facebook, they're a highly targeted audience of professionals that matter to their business. This means that HP is now indirectly connected to 43 million other professionals on LinkedIn, which makes up roughly a quarter of the entire LinkedIn population.

These followers hold a high value in contributions to HP in four ways. The engagement of the followers shows that these individuals are actively looking to consume HP’s content and learn more about its company insights. The second is that these followers are exactly the type of people that HP is looking to engage. These followers can now be segmented into a diverse range of businesses, positions, and other influential decision-making categories. With many of its one million followers sharing, linking, and promoting HP's content, they are amplifying the reach of the company to those 43 million other connections on the social network.

This is a great look into the potential power that LinkedIn holds as a marketing tool. It can provide us marketers with a well-organized, targeted, and highly qualified list of potential customers that are actively looking to be engaged by different brands. For the full article, visit the LinkedIn Blog.

Google Offers Social Sign-In Alternative to Facebook, From Ad Week

We all know that Facebook has had a pretty big monopoly on the world of social sign-ins and security, but that may be changing very soon. Google has released its own social powered sign-in option for online publishers and apps. This means that users will be able to connect with sites like USA Today, The Guardian, FitBit, Fancy, OpenTable, and more with their Google+ accounts.

From a marketer’s stand point, this could mean that regular activity on Google’s social network may grow even more than it has over the last couple years. Considering the rapid rate of growth in active users, it would be a good idea for companies not currently on Google+ to jump on the bandwagon now. With 500 million registered users already on the social network, we can only imagine how active it will be if those users start adopting the Google+ sign-in option over Facebook and Twitter. To read the full story, head on over to Ad Week.

Trendrr Reports: Social TV Oscar Activity Tripled, From Marketing Pilgrim

The Oscars. Usually spent in the comfort of our sweat pants while we obnoxiously rant and rave about who was dressed best, worst, and stupidest. And sometimes we do it on social networks, too. During this year's Oscars broadcast, real-time social media tracking company Trendrr kept tabs on all of our witty and not so witty comments across the Facebook, Twitter, GetGlue, and Viggie.

Last year’s total activity came in at about 4.5 million social media posts, which paled in comparison to this year’s staggering 13.2 million. That’s a lot of activity for an audience of people adorned in Snuggies and pajama pants. Twitter alone brought in 8.9 million tweets about the 85^th Academy Awards, with 82,300 tweets per minute coming in during Adele’s performance of the theme song to Skyfall. Needless to say, brands were pretty actively newsjacking the Oscars to gain some prime marketing time on their social networks. Events like this don’t come around all the time, but when they do, it should be a marketer’s job to jump on the opportunities they open up to reach a huge audience. Read more at Marketing Pilgrim.

Free Template: How to Create Five Fabulous Infographics in PowerPoint

If there’s one thing we know performs well on social networks, it's infographics. People love them and they love people. But more importantly, infographics move across social networks like wild fire. They are easily shareable and because of the high level of visual content involved, they make for great looking posts. One big reason why many inbound marketers haven’t been pumping out their own infographics is because the amount of time and design experience needed to create them. Well, we built these templates with all of our fellow inbound marketers in mind. These five professionally designed infographic templates will give you the inspiration and framework you need to build high quality infographics that you can use on your own social networks. You know we love our fellow inbound marketers just as much as we love inbound marketing itself! Enjoy. Download the templates for free today. 

Facebook Lets Advertisers Tap Purchase Data Partners to Target Customers, Categories, Like Car-Buyers, From Tech Crunch

It’s no secret that Facebook has been looking to dive deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of online advertising. The most recent news reveals that Facebook has partnered up with top online and offline purchase data providers like Epsilon, Acxiom, Datalogix, and BlueKai to provide advertisers with a hashed list of existing customers, potential prospects, and categories of people like pet lovers, soda drinkers, and car buyers. The goal is for Facebook to attract some big spenders by offering them a way to target the exact customers that have or will buy their products.

As marketers, this continued growth of Facebook’s advertising platform could yield some very favorable results for paid advertising efforts. Having access to accurate and relevant information can save you tons of money you may be wasting by targeting the wrong groups of people. Read more at Tech Crunch.

HubSpot's Weekly Marketing Update Podcast With Mike Volpe

Interested in hearing what the CMO of HubSpot has to say about the stories in this week's round-up? View our Marketing Update podcast below for a taste of the latest inbound marketing news from our CMO, Mike Volpe and his co-host. You can also subscribe to this weekly podcast through iTunes if you can't imagine kicking off your week without some inbound-themed video antics.

What other marketing stories were top of mind for you this past week?

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