Even though the two most popular social networks to emerge in the past few years (Instagram and Pinterest) revolve around visual content, there isn't much data about what content performs best on these platforms. Because Instagram and Pinterest revolve around visual (not textual) content and their APIs are difficult to access, it can be challenging to research these networks.

Guy Kawasaki is a special advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google. He is also the author of APE, What the Plus!, Enchantment, and nine other books. HubSpot invited Guy to reveal the secrets behind his incredibly active and popular social media profiles that enable him to reach millions each day.

Many people ask me how I manage my social media accounts (and others make stuff up rather than figure out what I do). Here are the gory, inside-story details of what I do. 

At HubSpot, we’ve been using social media as part of our inbound marketing strategy since before Twitter was born and back when Facebook was only accessible to students. Since then, we’ve accumulated a half-million Facebook fans and a quarter-million Twitter followers, been among the first businesses using Google+, and dove into Pinterest, Instagram, and more. Today, social media is one of the key inbound marketing channels we use to grow our business.

The first time I ever tweeted about a company and got a tailored response felt like serendipity. It’s easy to trivialize it now, but that first one-to-one interaction was a major breakthrough for me in the way companies could communicate with their customers. A whole new channel had opened up -- one that was at once more personal and more expansive than anything that had ever preceded it.

As a savvy inbound marketer, you're already sold on the value of using social media. But good social media marketing is about more than engagement, lead generation, and wider reach ... you gotta have some etiquette, man.

Etiquette? Really? Like pinkies-up-at-tea-time stuff?