How To Stay Up To Date On Current News Via Social Media

If you’re working in social media, it’s important to keep up to date with news and current events relevant to your business’ industry. The difficulty: finding that news can potentially be overwhelming. Fortunately, your existing social media accounts can be used to aggregate news and other content, as well as to communicate. It’s a great way to stay current in your industry.

Facebook

It is usually best for social media brand managers or marketing consultants to have a separate Facebook profile for managing a company’s social media account. Creating a professional Facebook profile with a company-taken photo, as well as profile information relevant to the business can help the employee maintain a professional appearance while managing the company’s Facebook page.

Employees can then use their professional profile to “like” other companies’ relevant  pages and to join groups. Be sure to like competitors to see how they are posting (this is a must on Twitter as well), as well as following websites that cover industry issues. For example, a marketing agency should follow well-known marketing blogs on Facebook, such as MarketingLand’s Facebook page:

Screenshot taken March 7, 2012.

Website, Blogs, and Companies will post relevant links and content, which is sometimes easier to find through a social media home page feed rather than searching via Google or the website itself.

Twitter

The same concepts can be used with Twitter, except the company’s Twitter account can Follow competitors, blogs, and websites, instead of an employee setting up a separate Twitter account. Many companies worry about how it will look to others when they follow competitors, but it doesn’t reflect badly on either party; besides giving the competitor one more “follow,” it is helping the company see what others in their field are up to.

Following related brands, websites, and blogs on Twitter through the company’s Twitter account makes it possible to easily re-tweet and “favorite” applicable content after it has been reviewed. To find relevant Twitter accounts to follow, use a service that looks through profiles and tweets for applicable keywords, such as Tweetdeck columns or Twitter directories, including WeFollow (note: here’s a list of Twitter directories published in 2009 by CNET). Using search.twitter.com can also be useful:

Screenshot taken March 7, 2012.

LinkedIn

There are several resources on LinkedIn that makes it easy to stay up-to-date with industry current events, trends, and what other companies are doing. First, employees using their personal LinkedIn account can post industry-related questions on LinkedIn Answers to initiate a discussion among other industry professionals.  Furthermore, answering questions from other users is a good way to establish credibility and personal and professional brand awareness.

Additionally, joining industry groups on LinkedIn is a good way to stay in the loop — users can have a daily or weekly digest of all group discussions emailed to them and can get to know other professionals through group discussions or involvement.

Finally, following related companies and competitors via the LinkedIn Follow feature for company pages is another way to see how other companies are using LinkedIn, as well as view any of their company posts and updates.