Lyell E. Petersen @93octane

These days everyone seems to have advice about how to run your social media marketing program. There are so many tips floating around, it’s hard to know what truly essential strategies you should follow to effectively use social media to build your business…Our process was to query data from hundreds of our brand clients to see what testable truths emerged — and here’s what we found: 10 rules that hold up across category and time.

1. The 1% Rule
To make social media marketing effective, marketers have to identify and engage — and better recognize and reward — these super-influentials.

2. The 2-4X Rule
When it comes to conversion, visitors driven to a site by influencers are to to four times more likely to convert compared to visitors from other sources.

3. The New Media/New Pipes Rule
In today’s socially driven internet, it matters far more what consumers do with your content than what you do with your content.

4. The Martha Stewart Rule
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Advertising Age | 10 Essential Rules for Brands in Social Media (by taddy Hall via @AdamBrooks)

When you think of social media roles, chances are you think of a community manager or the oh-so-generic “social media manager”, which is usually some function of the marketing department managing strictly social media programs. But there are loads of other potential roles that can integrate or represent social media alongside other business areas. Considering these is one of the primary ways to really integrate and entrench social media and its implications throughout the business, not just isolated in the communications department. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

1. Social Phone Operator
   …folks that help us man the front lines of what we call our Listening Grid. They’re responsible for manning the dashboard, picking up the alerts, and routing posts that require engagement or attention to the right people.
2. Lead Generation
   By listening carefully to the discussions around your brand, competition, or specific market or industry, you can spot when people are seeking out the kind of products or services you provide. We call this Listening at the Point Of Need.
3. Social Business Development
   Hush with you that social media can’t be good for B2B (I’ve been doing social media in B2B for two years and it’s working just fine, thank you).
4. (full article…)

Altitude Branding | 7 Social Media Roles You Haven’t Considered (by Amber Naslund)