Infographic highlighting data about social media marketing usage from the 2012 SEOmoz industry survey.

 

The first statistic highlighted on our infographic reveals that 44.4% of survey respondents self-professed either “advanced” or “expert” level social media ability. This shows that marketers are feeling an increased sense of ability to tackle what was once thought of as a new and unknown technology.

 

To little surprise in the social media marketing world, Facebook and Twitter lead as the most popular social network. In fact, our own social media lead generation team at HubSpot is big advocates for these two networks! What is surprising, however, is that Google+ emerges as the third most popular network. Google+ has historically been plagued with the "useless" label when it comes to generating social ROI, so one theory behind this ranking could be the high impact Google+ has on SEO.

 

While LinkedIn falls behind in fifth place, it turns out that 74.1% of marketers use LinkedIn for branding. I found this to be particularly interesting since LinkedIn Company Pages do not provide many options for branding. While they can update their status and add a company logo, marketers don't have the more advanced branding capabilities that they have on more visual networks such as Facebook or Pinterest. One theory behind this statistic could be branding via employees. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for showing off the wonderful talent your employees bring to your company.

 

Lastly, it turns out that 60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis options, as well as other analytics options, in their social media management tools. This comes as no surprise. When savvy social media marketers are communicating their messages online, they want to know exactly how those efforts are benefiting them by analyzing whether each social strategy is connecting to their end goal: revenue. Tools that report on social media analytics are becoming more and more in demand among marketers, which is exactly why the HubSpot team has worked so hard to provide reach metrics and CTR on all your social media messages, as well as ROI metrics like closed-loop reporting on leads and customers generated from social media, all within the HubSpot Social Media tool.

Via halhol

If you're not using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool, argues Shelly Kramer at MarketingProfs Daily Fix, you may be missing out on a very good thing: "According to data from HubSpot, LinkedIn is the most effective source of new business leads among the three leading social networks (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). And a study of some 3,000-plus B2B marketers indicated that LinkedIn's visitor-to-lead conversion rate is four times higher than that of Facebook and Twitter."

With LinkedIn Announcements, you can send email messages straight to the inboxes of likely prospects. Sound good? Here's the right way to do it:

• Ditch the default subject line. If you don't take the time to write an original subject line, why should anyone take the time to read your message? Treat this like any other email campaign—intrigue your recipient with a subject line that compels further investigation.
• Make your copy irresistible. Grab your reader's attention with a relevant case for action. "This is a great place for stats—not only can they present a compelling case in a short amount of space," she notes, "but they can also help readers visualize a particular topic or subject matter, which will help pique their interest."
• Include a call to action. Don't expect anyone to read your mind. Make your call to action, and the pathway to conversion, perfectly clear.
• Don't be a jerk. Would you want an endless stream of irrelevant LinkedIn Announcements? Probably not. So treat this access to a prospect's inbox with respect.

The Po!nt: With a strong LinkedIn strategy, your lead gen program can generate the high-quality leads your sales team craves.

Source: Daily Fix.