By now, you’ve seen at least one of those hilarious AT&T network commercials where a person with a painfully slow Internet connection receives a text message minutes after everyone else. By the time they open the message, everyone with a faster connection either looks annoyed or are embarrassed for them, making for an awkward situation.

As marketers, finding yourself behind the competition is the last place you want to be. When it comes to social media, corporate marketers no longer have an excuse for being the last to know. Today, not being up to speed on the latest news or trends in your respective industry gives your competition an edge.

There’s a lot of great content written about our respective industries every day that’s worth passing along to readers, who may not follow the same resources (websites, bloggers or industry influencers) that you do. This creates an opportunity to leverage your corporate blog as a communication channel that others can turn to to get the latest buzz and educate themselves on important industry topics. Doing so helps build thought leadership for your organization, a key objective for any corporate blog.

But merely passing along information is not enough. To build credibility, your content needs to be topical, engaging, innovative and timely. Another critical part of all this is becoming part of the 24/7 social media mix, adding to the ongoing conversation by providing your perspective on the day’s top stories.

As bloggers, it can be difficult producing enough fresh marketing content every day. The best way to become part of the mix is to blog or comment on other news stories out there. Linking to other articles won’t increase your SEO, but attributing or linking to high-profiled stories can put you on the radar of the websites or blogs you link to, as well as help generate more traffic to your website. When you come across a relevant article, here are a few ideas you might consider that can get your blog in the social media mix:

• Provide unique experiences or cite examples that support the story’s content
• Publish internal stats, survey, etc. that support or challenge industry trends
• Tie your corporate message or recent announcements with timely stories
• Expand on specific points or ideas within the article

As marketers, we should always have our creative marketing caps on. The key to creating fresh content is keeping up with the latest buzz and industry trends, providing our perspective on how we can take ideas to the next level. Because, in the end, the last scenario you want is your CEO asking you about some article or industry trend that you’ve never even heard of. As marketers, being the last to know always makes for an awkward situation.