Social Marketing Flow IV - Social Marketing Flow Managers

Social Media Flow In Four Parts (this is the last post of a 4 part series).

Social Media Is Like Jazz

Social Media Flow Managers are charged with mining the gold from the social media flood. They operate in real time and against the clock. Social media is 24/7/365 so Social Media Flow Managers should be organized around the clock and calendar. They should have “soft” and “hard” conversion goals such as:

• Viewership (soft).
• Membership (harder).
• Money (hardest).

Eventually Social Media Flow Managers should spend 100% of their time monitoring and channeling flow, but in the beginning Social Media Flow Managers may create and curate content to stoke a company’s content engine. You will know it is time to remove content creation and curation duties when one trip around your content velodrome takes long enough there is enough new feedback in need of response and further curation that another loop needs to start.

Social Media Flow Managers will eventually focus on making the circuit around your content velodrome faster and faster producing more and more feedback (via content curated in, created or responded to). Social Media Flow Managers are fishermen casting a content net into a deep blue ocean. They are charged with learning where and what to cast and judged by the clear results they produce.

Why Social Media Flow Must Be Managers
Many companies will seek to staff their social media with the lowest cost employees they can find. If that is your approach, please come compete with me and the companies Atlantic BT helps create Internet marketing for. Your social marketing team must be the fighter pilots of your marketing and sales group. Social Flow Managers need to know your product line inside and out, have an extensive personal network with KLOUT and be seasoned enough to know the difference between real gold and fool’s gold.

The Social Media Flow Managers must be connected to your branding, PPC, SEO, mobile and web development teams. If you create a webpage design without feedback and input from your social meida fighter pilots you are nuts. Social Media Flow Managers are going to be focused on things such as the ease of sharing, what tools you use for sharing and the benefits and liabilities of each content sharing approach.

How can an Intern or recent college graduate know how to translate what they see into what your company needs to know? A: They can’t and shouldn’t be asked to attempt to do so. Interns and recent college graduates are important since they have been swimming in social media longer and may know cool tricks and tools, so include them on the team, but don’t expect them to lead.

A social Media Flow Manager is combines key roles including:

• Sales.
• Customer Service.
• Marketing.
• Merchandiser.
• Copywriter.
• Programmer.

Key Performance Indicators For Great Social Media Flow Managers (SMFM)
KPIs for SMFMs include macro things like site traffic and micro things like views of a particular piece of content (since their curation is what put the content in your customer’s reach).Here are some metrics to use to know when your SMFMs are really rocking:

• Web Site Traffic Doubles in less than a year. 
• Form completion (i.e. sales leads for B2B or site sales for B2C) goes up by at least 25% (2x traffic doesn’t translate 1 to 1 to form completions). 
•  Email List size doubles in less than a year. 
•  Cost of content creation declines by 10% or more even as content created or curated at least doubles.

When your Social Media Flow Managers do all four of those things and you should bonus them and ride them around on your shoulders. If, after reading all this, you think social media is a stupid game PLEASE come compete with us (or hopefully you already are).

I know there is amazing ROI in social media, but I believe in the large tableau of currency. I believe in ATTENTION, TRAFFIC, COMMUNITY, CONTRIBUTION and SHARING as forms of hard currency, money in its early stages for Internet marketers. I also believe in the breakdown of US and THEM:

Read Social Media Marketing - The Most Important ROI

This is the last of a 4 part series on Social Marketing Flow. If you missed one here are links to the others:

Social Marketing Flow In 4 Parts

Social Marketing Flow II - Model And Tools

Social Marketing Flow III - Examples