If you recently received emails urging you to update your company’s Twitter and LinkedIn profile layouts and sighed with exasperation, you’re not alone. In the ever-evolving world of social media, keeping up with new outlets and changing layouts can be exhausting business.

But as the business world becomes increasingly social, keeping your social sites cutting-edge is well worth the effort. Whether they’re interested in a career, your product, or are just fans of your brand, your audience is turning to social media for information on your business. Developing an updated, cohesive style across your social media outlets is a good way to establish credibility.

If you’ve taken on the daunting task of bringing your social sites up to date, we’ve attempted to make your life a bit easier by providing the exact layout dimensions for four major social media outlets, and included a few helpful tips along the way.

Facebook

Facebook has pretty much kept things unchanged since their major switch to Timeline in the beginning of April. However, it is important to remember that Facebook is the most visual of the social media giants. This is the best place to post plenty of visual content and company photos, and your cover photo needs to be the strongest image of all. Keep it simple, eye-catching, and consistent with your brand. Check out a few strong examples from other companies for inspiration.

Google+

Again, there haven’t been any major changes to the Google+ layout since their redesign in April, but here are a couple of tips if you’re redoing your banner-ad-like cover image. Although the space technically measures 940 x 180px, when you factor in a 260px profile image and margins, you’re working with roughly 610 x 180px. Also keep in mind that, as the Google+ layout tends to include a significant amount of whitespace when viewed on most screens, darker images and images with color are preferable.

Twitter

You’ve probably noticed that Twitter recently joined the cover photo trend, and there’s a good chance you’ve also noticed (with some frustration) that your Facebook cover photo will not work with the unique layout. The silver lining? With the centralized layout, 80 x 80px profile pic and 410 x 100px text box, you have to keep this cover photo simple, so don’t spend too much time on a complicated design. Also remember that the text is white, so try to keep the area behind this textbox dark. Twitter does add a slight gradient, but a busy or light-colored backdrop could still make your text unreadable.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has rolled out some major changes recently, both with company pages and career pages. Thankfully, the new cover image for this social site is incredibly straightforward — 640 x 220px with no overlying images or text. For more information on how to import content from your old page into the new format, check out LinkedIn’s self-guided tour.

A cohesive look across your social sites makes for an improved user experience for your social audiences while maintaining a positive and consistent brand image, and in a world that’s becoming increasingly dependent on social media, it could be a chance to make a great first impression.

What goes into a successful email marketing campaign? For a relatively basic component of online marketing, there are a lot of points to consider when sending out the perfect eblast. Do you have an attention-grabbing subject line? Are you sending the right content, and at the right time? Will the content show up on different platforms and devices?

If there’s one thing we learned from Pardot’s recent survey of B2B marketers, it’s that email (though its role is evolving) is far from irrelevant in today’s marketing world. Researching best practices, trying out different formulas and optimizing your email marketing campaigns are all worthwhile time investments — and so is making sure that all of your efforts don’t go to waste in someone’s spam filter. So don’t forget to monitor deliverability: print out the following checklist, hang it by your desk and make sure that each email campaign you send out is not only effective, but also reaches its target.

Interestingly, our study revealed that although email continues to serve as a valuable tool for B2B marketers, its role in marketing campaigns has evolved. Once a prominent tool for acquiring leads, our findings show that nearly 70% of B2B marketers no longer consider email to be their primary tool for lead generation. With inbound marketing on the rise, many marketers are turning to a variety of other tactics for lead generation, and using email predominantly as a lead nurturing tool.

Check out some of our other significant findings in the following infographic, and read a further analysis of this email marketing study in today’s press release on MarketWire.

When it comes to personally connecting with old friends and scattered family members, Facebook is still the reigning champion – and probably still your best bet if you want all your friends to “like” that new photo of your two year old. Celebrities, too, seem to have more luck on Facebook pages (check out this article’s comparison of Lady Gaga’s success on each site). But our comparison of the two networks in January uncovered an interesting trend that still appears to hold true: many business pages (and particularly those that relate to technology) are thriving on Google+ – in some cases even more so than on their corresponding Facebook pages. Google+ seems to have attracted a smaller but highly tech-savvy crowd, and the conversation reflects as much.

So what do you need to know as a B2B marketer? At least at this point, Google+ is no Facebook, but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it as a marketing tool. While Google+ doesn’t have (and may never have) the numbers that Facebook has in terms of users and engagement, the type of engagement that occurs in the Google+ setting may actually make it a choice outlet for your marketing messages.

Need some help keeping the two straight? Pardot’s Matt Wesson put together the following infographic, highlighting some of the key differences between Google+ and Facebook pages and sharing a few tips on formulating a marketing strategy for each.

What are your thoughts on Google+ as a marketing tool for brands? Is it a more or less effective tool than Facebook? We love to hear your thoughts!

Download this infographic.

Embed “Google+ vs. Facebook: A Guide to Your Brand Page Strategy” on your site: copy and paste the code below.

<img src="http://www2.pardot.com/brandpagesinfographic" width="600">
<p> - Google+ vs. Facebook: A Guide to Your Brand Page Strategy - An infographic by the team at <a href="http://www.pardot.com/blog/">Pardot Marketing Automation</a></p>