Great articles roundup: Social measurement, bootstrapping, marketing, social media

• May 03, 2013

By Daylin Mantyka

As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are memeburn, ReadWriteWeb, TopRank Blog and Fast Company.

Meaningful social measurement: A lesson from the underpants gnomes

Sam Beckbessinger looks at why measuring follower counts on social media is a meaningless metric that’s quickly falling out of favour. Instead, she proposes four more meaningful metrics that offer greater insight into the community you’ve created around your brand.

Bootstrapping Your Startup: 7 Hard-earned tips from real entrepreneurs

Raising money to scale your startup is one path to follow on the road to growth. Bootstrapping — startups who intentionally avoid taking on cash from investors — is another. Scott Gerber talks with seven experienced bootstrappers who share the benefits they’ve seen with being lean and what other startup founders need to watch out for.

The best marketing investment you’ll ever make

Inbound, content, social, mobile, converged, omni-channel, transmedia. The list of marketing channels and strategies vying for our budgetary attention goes on and on. Lee Odden looks at what methods attract the most attention that may also influence purchasing decisions.

Using social media to make offline products more meaningful

The digital world has successfully infiltrated our every day lives  — especially with the advent of location-based technologies such as Foursquare, Yelp and Google Street View. Despite the 24/7 connection, Kealan Lennon writes that “Our lives are coming back offline” in an insightful piece about  using social media to bridge the real and digital worlds.