Must-Read List of Free Social Media White Papers

12 Essential Tips for Success in Social Media – BuzzLogic BuzzLogic is a digital media company with a data-driven ad platform built to optimize advertising across the largest pool of trusted blog content on the web. We combine proprietary conversational analytics with industry-leading audience targeting data to maximize performance – and provide contextual insight to boost results.

The Social Media Playbook – 360i Marketing used to be different – a lot different. Today, brands are faced with a myriad of opportunities for reaching customers online; and, while the social landscape can be daunting, it holds a world of opportunities for connecting with consumers in deeper and more meaningful ways.

The goals of the Playbook are to:

  • Provide a framework for establishing a set of clear objectives and strategy when approaching social marketing
  • Move beyond the checklist approach and offer a filter for evaluating the myriad opportunities and platforms
  • Encourage thinking of social marketing as an opportunity to have a continuous, valuable exchange with customers
  • Advance discussions on amplifying marketing results through the integration of social marketing and offline campaigns

Oh My God What Happened and What Should I Do? – Innovative Thunder This book helps traditional advertising and marketing people master the step into the digital era, providing tools to create campaigns that reach the people of today. It was not written by a CMO giving expensive seminars and presenting big theories with no solutions, but by a creative team dealing with and living the changes in media every day.

The Science of Retweets – Dan Zarrella a 22 page report full of scientifically proven ways to get more retweets from Hubspot viral marketing scientist and author of the Social Media Marketing Book.

Nimble – Razorfish It’s aimed at content producers that are moving from traditional media distribution to digital, and finding themselves facing new challenges. Most magazines, newspapers, TV shows, etc. have a website at this point, but it doesn’t mean that they’re making the most of the digital experiences that they’re creating for their audience. The report looks at three major areas of interest to content companies – how they attact and retain their audience, how they deliver content across new channels, platforms, and devices, and how they remain profitable in the new digital economy…

The report discusses the types of structure that can set content free, and how this approach will change the role of the editor, the way content companies make money, the way they deliver content, and the way they attract an audience. It also includes information about emerging technologies and tools that can help digital content publishers move into this nimble world.

If you have an iPad, I recommend using the killer combination of DropBox and GoodReader to read these PDFs. Dropbox lets you automatically sync files from your computer to the cloud to be accessed through the website or on your iPad, iPhone, or Android smartphone. Good Reader (iPad and iPhone only) functions as a really slick document reader.

For comprehensive reading, I recommend the following books about social media community management and marketing:

Engage! By Brian Solis

Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

The New Community Rules: Marketing On The Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Trust Agent by Chris Brogran

Let us know what you recommend in the comments section.