Someone asked me the other day about how the average person is supposed to keep up with all of the changes in the fields of social media, SEO, and inbound marketing. I was a bit caught off guard by both the question and the tone. It then occurred to me that not everyone spends the first part of their day actively reviewing everything that’s happened in those fields in the past 24 hours and tweeting about it. My first thought was to find people like me, but my second thought was that would make me even busier so I decided to write a blog post about it instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know everything that there is to know, and I can’t possibly hope to keep track of 1% of everything that is written daily. I do however spend a portion of every morning seeking out the cream of the crop that the blogosphere has to offer from the past 24 hours. But if that isn’t a part of your job description then I’ve put together 5 tips that can help you get the most benefit for what time you do have.
1) Harness Twitter
Build a network or list of people (like me) who do the leg work for you and scan that feed occasionally in search of any news or updates that are relevant for you. A lot of people underestimate the power of Twitter for concentrating information. Keep in mind a lot of people post things that may be months or years old; if you want to be cutting edge then you need to follow people who are tweeting about things that are happening now.
2) Blogs Not Books
Books are wonderful. They are deep, engaging, and transformative. However they take so long to publish that they may very well be partially obsolete by the time they get to you. If you’re looking for deep general and historical information, then go for the books. But if you want to stay cutting edge and know about what’s changing today, then blogs are the way to go. Today’s blogs are tomorrow’s books.
3) Subscribe to Blogs
Subscribe to the blogs of some of the hottest experts in your field. I recommend subscribing via Feedburner email updates so you can sort the emails easily when they come in and then read them at your leisure. This is a little bit more time intensive than the Twitter plan, but the information comes to you. The key is being very selective about what blogs you subscribe to in order to get a good, relevant balance of information.
4) Word of Mouth
Get to know some people who are plugged in to SEO, social media, and inbound marketing and have lunch or coffee with them regularly. This is often seen as the unconventional approach these days. But face-to-face relationships are a great way to stay current on what’s happening, provided of course, you know people are staying current themselves.
5) Investing
I know it seems a bit self serving, but this is just part of reality. If you need to stay current in areas of specialized knowledge then one solution is to hire people or organizations that are experts at staying current. It’s a simple cost equation, when the cost of paying for someone with the knowledge is lower than the cost of your time to learn it; it makes financial sense to bring in help.
As you can see there are a number of ways to stay current without devoting every waking hour, taking a social media course, or signing up for some social media training. You just need to find the right tools or seek out the right social media help. If you want to get moving right away then subscribing to our blog and Twitter feed would be a great start!
The ineffective or inappropriate use of social media is something we refer to as being socially awkward. If you’d like more information that can provide social media training, social strategy, and the social media help your organization needs to stay out of this category then download our Free Guide Social Media 101 today!
