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Mmm ... a slice of pie.  Too bad we're not really talking about dessert here.

Our top inbound marketing article this week discusses how you can slice up your social media pie into various types of engagement in different size pieces to suit your taste. Oh yeah -- and we'll let you have one of the bigger pieces.

1. Slicing Your Social Media Pie

Author: Chris Brogan on OPEN Forum

Brogan offers a great basic frame for how you should devote your time on social media marketing, dividing your pie into three slices: listening, creating and communicating.  His suggestion is to start by focusing 20% on listening, 40% on creating and the final 40% on communicating.

While Brogan thinks this is a good recipe for success, he also understands people have different tastes.  Perhaps you have to devote some of your time to other parts of your marketing mix.  It's okay to cut more slices and find a formula that works.  Now, I love Chris Brogan's analogy here, but I've gotta admit: It's making me hungry.  

Lesson: Divide and conquer your social media efforts.

2. 4 Tech Trends You Must Understand to be an Effective Marketer

Author: Elyssa Pallai of ReadWriteWeb

Elyssa's post discusses the most recent trends that should be top-of-mind for marketers trying to stay on top of marketing in a technology-driven world.  While she doesn't recommend forgetting about concepts like search engine optimization, she reminds us how important it is to embrace the power and opportunities afforded by the latest trends.

What latest trends is she talking about?  The real-time Web, social networks, the mobile Web and location-based marketing top the list.  If you don't understand these technologies and what they mean for marketing, you better get with it soon, she says.

Lesson: Technology trends are constantly changing.  Stay on top of the latest developments for maximum marketing potential.

3. 20 Metrics To Effectively Track Social Media Campaigns

Author: Chris Bennett of Search Engine Land

Social media is a powerful tool that can affect an entire business directly and indirectly, but at the end of the day, you still need to prove your engagement is working.  Let's face it -- measuring the performance of your programs is important for every marketing undertaking.

For now, Chris focuses on measuring social media initiatives, highlighting a variety of metrics marketers can use to analyze their efforts.  Some of these metrics include traffic, unique visitors, referral URLs, conversions and backlinks, to name a few.

Lesson: Use marketing and Web analytics to regularly measure your social media efforts so you know what is and isn't working.

4. How to Become an A-List Blogger

Author: Glen Allsopp of Copyblogger

So you're a fellow blogger.  Chances are you don't want to be just a blogger but a great blogger.  Good thing Glen has some A-list tips for folks like you (hey -- I'm one of you!) who are trying to build a popular business blog.

His top tips include:

• Make content your #1 focus
• Stick to your own guidelines
• Recognize your own influence
• Look at "who," not "what"
  

Lesson: A successful blog starts with the blogger. Focus on A-list qualities to build an A-list blog.

5. 5 Ways to Share Content to Create Referrals

Author: John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing

As a business, creating content is one of the best tactics you can use to get found online.  Of course, you can create all the content you want, but if you don't get it into the hands of your prospects, you're going to be wasting a lot of your time.

While John definitely advocates promotion via social media, he also recognizes another way to amplify the reach of your content: through referals.  A few ways he recommends you generate them is by writing guest blog posts, hosting a group in social networks, encouraging people to bring a friend to events/webinars you're hosting, co-branding your content or creating an event.

Lesson: Explore opportunities to generate referals as an alternative content marketing strategy.

Photo by Ralph Daily

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