This week's top five news stories from InboundMarketing.com remind us to always be listening, learning, testing, and analyzing. Do these things, and you can start optimizing (your content, that is).
1. How to Make Your Tweets More Useful
Author: John Jantsch
Twitter ROI can often be very hard to measure. According to Jantsch, if customer engagement and interest is your long term goal, your task now should be to find metrics and tools to track and test your tweets.
Jantsch points out a slew of ways to get ROI from your tweets, from linking to your blog and asking for feedback to adjusting the time of day you tweet to asking your followers for their opinion. By testing and tracking your tweets, you can optimize your content and increase ROI.
Lesson: Track Your Tweets
2. Who Uses Social Networks and What Are They Like?
Author: Sarah Perez
This study reveals that social networkers are a growing breed, but they are not necessarily as open or willing to connect as companies may think. Although almost 50% of users are "friends" with or follow a brand, over 80% of users either felt neutral or negative about companies with a social media presence; many would only connect with friends and family.
What we can learn from this is that putting yourself out there is not enough; it's necessary to go one step further and find a way to connect with these users. If you can show them you care, show them you are sincere AND make it easy for them to start a conversation with you -- then they just might be your next prospect.
Lesson: Make It Easy, Make It Personal, Make Them Care
3. Social Media and New Roles for Employees
Author: Dan Schawbel
In his article, Schawbel covers five social media roles that an employee can play to strengthen or reinforce a company's brand or messaging. For instance, a supporter can use social media to track what customers are saying and help to answer their questions or acknowledge feedback.
As a supporter or any of the other four roles, you can not only help your company, but also increase your own value as an employee by becoming a thought leader, bringing in new business, or strengthening relationships.
Lesson: Help Your Company, Help Yourself
4. Getting True Value from LinkedIn
Author: Suzanna Vara
As Vara says, LinkedIn "is a tool that is widely underused." Many people join LinkedIn, copy their resumé onto their profile, add their friends and coworkers, then abandon ship. Their page is static and inefficient.
Suzanne suggests taking advantage of the many tools and applications LinkedIn provides. Update your status, keep your profile current, pose and answer questions or research a company. Your resumé connects to no one, but LinkedIn can connect to anyone.
Lesson: Not Just a Resumé
5. Study: Brands Must Do Better in Social Media
Author: Mark Walsh
Recently, many companies have turned to social media to find conversations about their brand and cull potential customers from these networks. However, executing a social media campaign should not end at the creation of a Facebook page or a weekly Tweet linking to a press release.
The study suggests that companies should incorporate social media into their "overall marketing strategy" as opposed to using it as an "afterthought." Using social media to join existing conversations, analyze the purchasing process and identify influencers can yield much greater results than an unchanging Facebook page.
Lesson: An Afterthought No More
Photo Credit: banlon1964
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