INBOUND

KEY FINDINGS
CONTENT REMAINS KING
When Bill Gates declared in 1996 that on the web,
“content is king”, few would have expected quite
how true this prediction would be. To have any
chance of surfacing on a search engine, companies
need to produce regular, fresh and
relevant content to stand out from the crowd.
Sharegate scored highest for their blog in our
ranking - a whopping 9.2 out of 10.
A recent study found a sharp increase in the number
of CEOs recognising Twitter as a valuable medium.
Twice as many CEOs use Twitter now compared to
2010 with over 80% of global CEOs now engaged
socially. Interestingly, Facebook saw a 0% participation
rating from CEOs.
Publishing daily content on their blog (and
sometimes more), Sharegate dominates the first
couple of pages of search engine results for certain
strategic search terms. This is testament to
extremely effective SEO planning, but the
publication of new and interesting content is just as
important.
To get anywhere near this kind of dominance,
Microsoft Partners should develop strong content
marketing strategies and publish consistently. This
year’s top 50 partners posted a new blog post every
10.5 days. Want to break into the top 10? Our
analysis found those leading the way posted on
average a new blog every 4.1 days.
Read our marketing beginners guide on page 42 to
learn how you can put the building blocks in place
for this kind of success.
Nutanix reigned supreme in 2016 on Twitter and led
the way with an impressive score of 8.9. Many other
firms were close on their heels with punchy, engaging
and original ways of reaching audiences.
Building the perfect following vs followers’ ratio is an
important method for developing a great Twitter
account. Get the ratio too high and you can look overly
keen, too low, and it’s likely your messages aren’t hitting
the proverbial sweet spot.
In this year’s top 10, we saw that for every 1 person
followed, 3.93 followed back. So if your ratio is
between 1:3-4 you’re on the right track. Somewhat
surprisingly, only 30% of this year’s top 20 had a
pinned tweet, a missed opportunity for highlighting
campaign material and company news.
ANOTHER WINNING YEAR
This year, the bar has been set very high for marketers
at Microsoft Partners. We can’t wait to see how brands
will innovate and improve in the next 12 months.
SOCIAL IS ESSENTIAL
Twitter remains the number one tool for brands to
connect with their customers, potential leads and
the latest news.
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