New Social Media Features for Marketers to Be Aware Of [Marketing Update]

Last week, Mike and Karen hosted the Marketing Update from the Inbound Marketing Summit where they discussed a number of interesting social media stories from the previous week. 

Facebook Launches the Subscribe Button

This past week, Facebook launched a subscribe button , which allows you to choose on a user by user basis "whether you'd like to see all updates, most updates, or just important updates from another user." It also allows you to open up your profile to subscribers who are not your friends on Facebook. 

By opening up more of its content to the public, Facebook is increasing your content's chances of showing up in search engine results. Facebook's subscribe option also allows individuals to grow their following and determine which content they want to make viewable to certain groups of friends or subscribers. 

Marketing Takeaway: When publishing content in social networks, make sure you are making it publicly available. This will enable your content to reach a much broader audience beyond your direct network, extending its reach. In addition, be sure you're optimizing your social media posts and updates with appropriate keywords for your business to help it get found by searchers. This will increase the impact your social media posts have on organic search traffic to your website.

Twitter Announces Twitter Web Analytics

Twitter announced last week that it will be releasing its own official Twitter Web Analytics tool . The aim of the tools is to help "website owners understand how much traffic they generate from Twitter as well as the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their websites." It will allow marketers to determine:

• How much of their website content is being shared on Twitter.
• How much web traffic Twitter generates for their website.
• How effective their Tweet Button integration is.

As an inbound marketer, measuring your various marketing efforts is an important element of success. Understanding what is working and what isn't allows you to focus your energy and limited time where it can impact your business the most. 

Marketing Takeaway: Always be on the lookout for new ways to measure, and gain a solid understanding, about your marketing efforts. If you don't already have integrated marketing analytics software that offers these types of analytics, consider one. Analyzing your marketing programs and understanding where your traffic and leads are coming from can help you improve your campaigns, do more of what works, and less of what doesn't.

What do you think about Facebook's and Twitter's latest tools and developments?