How To Keep Up-To-Date With Social Media

24 Nov 2016
Alan Martin

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Want to know what’s working right now on social media?

Do you feel you are constantly behind the curve and playing catch-up with the latest advice from industry experts?

Social media changes fast and tactics and strategies that worked well in the past are often no longer effective. Platforms change at an alarming rate, and consumer behaviour is evolving at pace too. I am often asked how I keep up-to-date with everything that’s going on.

Well first of all, it does takes an investment in time, I am not going to lie! My day-to-day job revolves around social media and online marketing, and even in this niche within the overall field of marketing, it can be almost impossible to keep up with everything that’s going on. The key though is to be strategic with where you are spending your time and the content that you are consuming, so you are only keeping up with what’s most relevant to you at the time that you need it.

To help you out, I’ve compiled a shortlist of the top blogs, social media influencers and podcasts that I consume regularly, and what they offer in terms of content. They won’t all be relevant to you but you will be able to pick and choose what topics you most need to be kept informed about.

Hint: You might want to bookmark this article and dip into it whenever you have a specific need.

Top Social Media Blogs

SocialMediaExaminer – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

SocialMediaExaminer is an awesome source of general social media tips and advice on a wide range of topics and platforms. They post daily articles that are always high quality and informative, yet bite-sized so very digestible, even if you don’t have a lot of time. I would highly recommend that you sign up for their email newsletter, which comes out every couple of days with a summary of their latest blog articles. They also produce a free annual report called “The Social Media Marketing Industry Report”, which you can get hold of here.

SocialMedia Today – http://www.socialmediatoday.com/

Social Media Today is like an online newspaper for the social media marketer. There is a ton of super in-depth content on this site and you can also sign up for a daily email alert for their latest articles. Use the tabs at the top of the page on the blog to navigate to your area of interest e.g. ‘Social Networks’ and choose from one of their sub topics or read their latest articles. Warning: you could spend hours on this site, so be strategic about what you want to learn.

Buffer Social – https://blog.bufferapp.com/

The Buffer Social blog is run by BufferApp (one of my favourite social media tools) and is a great place to keep current about what’s working on social media at the moment. What I love about their content is that they quite often share data and insights from their own experiments, so you can absorb the lessons learned and test them in your own business. They also have an email newsletter that’s well worth signing up for.

Hootsuite Social – https://blog.hootsuite.com/

The Hootsuite Social blog is a really great resource for both evergreen tips and advice e.g. how to create a social media strategy, as well as more current ‘How To’ type articles. The content is extremely in-depth but easy to follow and implement. I would highly recommend signing up for their email newsletter too.

Digital Marketer – http://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/

Digital Marketer are the experts in funnel building and their content explores a wide variety of topics related to content marketing and building sales funnels that convert. If you are serious about combining email marketing and social media, you will want to check out the articles on the blog regularly.

Neil Patel – http://neilpatel.com/blog/

Neil Patel’s blog is perhaps a bit of a hidden gem but could be your secret weapon in the fight to stay current with all things SEO related. Neil creates extremely long and detailed articles that are just jam-packed with insights and take-aways, that will help you get more traffic to your website and ultimately win more customers.

Social Media Influencers

As well as subscribing to the above blogs, there are certain industry experts that I would refer to when I am looking for information on a particular area of interest. Here are some of the most useful people to be aware of and why I recommend them.

Jon Loomer – http://www.jonloomer.com/

If you want to know anything about advertising using Facebook’s Power Editor, I couldn’t think of a more knowledgeable guy on the planet than Jon Loomer. He has created a niche within a niche, focusing on not just Facebook ads, but more specifically Facebook ads created via the Power Editor.

Andrea Vahl – http://www.andreavahl.com/

Andrea always cracks me up when I watch one of her webinars (in a good way)! Just check out her website and you will see a picture of her alter ego “Grandma Mary”.  Andrea comes from a stand-up comedy background, which is apparent when you spend any time at all either reading her blog posts or watching her webinars. Apart from being entertaining though, Andrea has a real knack of taking complicated topics and explaining them in a really simple and easy to understand way. She is extremely knowledgeable about Facebook and has a good all-round knowledge of all the major social media platforms.

Mari Smith – https://www.marismith.com/

No list of social media influencers would be complete without mentioning Mari Smith. Apart from being Scottish, which is a big plus in my book, she is a major Facebook influencer, and has even been hired by Facebook to tour the U.S. giving Facebook marketing tips to businesses. Mari is an author and speaker and has been at the top level of social media influencers for a long time. There is nothing about Facebook that Mari doesn’t know and her Facebook page is well worth following, but a lot of the content that she creates on her blog is more geared towards the newbie Facebook marketer.

Melonie Dodaro – http://topdogsocialmedia.com/

If you want to be kept up-to-date with the latest features and strategies for using LinkedIn to increase your network and your sales results ethically, Melonie’s blog over at ‘Top Dog Social Media’ is well worth checking out. Her content is great and easy to follow and covers all aspects of social selling using LinkedIn.

If you are looking for a good introduction to LinkedIn marketing and social selling, her book “The LinkedIn Code” (affiliate link) is well worth a read! Make sure you also check out her blog and sign up for her mailing list.

Mark Schaefer – https://www.businessesgrow.com/blog/

If you want to learn about content marketing, there is none better to learn from than Mark Schaefer. In fact I am sure he should be dubbed “The Godfather of Content Marketing”. I had the pleasure of meeting Mark at The Content Marketing Academy conference this year. Not only is he a nice guy and extremely genuine, his knowledge of content marketing is second to none.

Amy Porterfield – http://www.amyporterfield.com/

Amy is great and if you see one of her webinars advertised, you should definitly sign up for that. She started out in the entrepreneurial world as a Facebook expert but in recent years she has transitioned more towards using webinars as a platform to grow your business and how to create online courses. If you check out her blog, there are some excellent articles on it on a whole range of topics related to getting to grips with social media as a Solopreneur. She always creates valuable content that is clear and easy to follow.

Top Podcasts

I love listening to podcasts, usually when I am in the car or while I am eating breakfast or doing something boring and routine like washing dishes. They are a great way to stay current with your knowledge, but also make the best use of your time. I don’t know about you but one thing I hate is wasting time! Here are my top 4 podcasts:

The Solopreneur Hour with Michael O’Neal
https://solopreneurhour.com/

Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/

The Eventual Millionaire with Jamie Masters
http://eventualmillionaire.com/millionaire-case-studies/

The Perpetual Traffic Podcast (content related to social media ads)
http://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/

Conclusion

Keeping up-to-date is an important activity, but you also need to be strategic about this. It can be all too easy to spend your life in ‘learning’ mode and not actually implement what you have been learning. You need to test out the tactics and strategies you have learned in your own business, to see what works and what doesn’t for your particular situation.

I also regularly sign up for webinars whenever I can, usually by the people I’ve mentioned above, and read a load of books, but you need to be careful about the books you read because if they are super tactical, they will likely be out of date by the time they are printed. You can check out my list of recommended books here!

Okay over to you! Let me know in the comments below what resources you use to stay current with what’s happening in social media (hopefully someone will say “the Chat Marketing blog”) 😉

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