Back in January, we added several people to our team (welcome Jamie, Katie, Mary, Ken and Hudson), but it looks like we need several more to accommodate continued growth from great clients. If you're looking for work in social media marketing, please check out the positions below. If you're not, but would consider sharing this with your networks on Twitter and/or Facebook, that would be a great help.

Do know that we're wildly picky (we have no choice), but if you've got rock-star potential in this business, we're ready to learn more about you. Take a look at the list below and figure out the position that fits your background and apply for it.

Whenever we post job openings, we get many "junk" responses, so we don't consider resumes from people who don't show a little effort or who don't follow basic instructions. We'd like to consider yours. A customized cover letter and an attached resume or link to your LinkedIn profile would be a great start. (That's not so hard, right?)

NOTE: The first position listed will be based in Seattle. The rest will be based out of our Raleigh, NC office.

With the conclusion of our series, "26 Social Media Marketing Examples in Detail", I was contacted by Rich Laburn, a social media consultant and wildlife filmmaker, whose passion is promoting the luxury safari market.  Since he has done social media work for Londolozi (a private game reserve in the Sabi Sands region of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park in South Africa), he requested that I dive into what they are doing and give some feedback for how Londolozi's current efforts are going.

This said, I can guarantee you that I have not received compensation for this post (but if I for some reason get offered the opportunity to go, I'll be sure to blog about it).

Enough wishful thinking. Lets jump in.

Number one: What's your objective?

Number two: How are you going to measure it?

These two questions aren't revolutionary - they're among the first questions that should be asked at the start of planning for any new project. Yet they often seem to get left by the wayside, or at the very least poorly answered, when it comes to social media marketing projects.

Question #1 is pretty straightforward, though the answers are often anything but. Some days you get lucky, and the answer is clear and concise - "increase unaided brand awareness from 10% to 15%" or "drive 20% more traffic to our new landing page." All too often however the answer is either vague - "build buzz" - or confuses the objective with the means to achieve it - "get more fans and followers!"

I got excited about his panel because it seemed to speak to me specifically, and sure enough, it really delivered. The panel concentrated on two aspects of web writing, first is to explore writing web content, and secondly how to write web content for a living. For the purposes of this post, I'll be concentrating on the first aspect because it is a little more applicaple to our audience.

Webwriting vs. Copywriting

I'm a "copywriter," but today I learned what I really might be is a web writer. Web writing and copywriting are different things. A web writer is responsible for ongoing content. Web writers are also responsible for determining the best vessel to disseminate content. It is important to know your audience, and to pick the right vehicle to show your content.

Thinking in terms of the anatomy of the writing itself, its about who you are communicating with and how you are communicating it with. Web writing is not just blocks of text. All things have to work in harmony together in webwriting. You're writing for an audience that is thinking about the next thing they are going to do, and you have to guide them to the next step. They are looking to you as a guide. You are a tour guide as well as a sprinter. You're racing ahead to anticipate the selection the audience will make. When you are writing for the web, you are collaborating, and all the design elements-- including copy-- must be in harmony.

Many of the brands I work with are extremely interested in the Chinese market. With a burgeoning economy and a billion people, it's easy to understand why. In fact, one of my clients got back from China just in time to fly to Austin for this conference. Her description of the differences was fascinating.

So if we're going to want to look at social media marketing for the Chinese market, we need to understand social media in China. That's why I attended "Social Media and China: Different than You Think" at SxSW.

One of the standing room only panels at SxSW was called, "Extending Your Brand: There's an App for That."  With mobile and mobile social growing in popularity, the appeal for brands was obvious.

There's a big difference between being a web writer and being a content strategist, according to Christina Halvorson, the CEO of Brain Traffic and author of "Content Strategy for the Web", whose company does nothing but content strategy. She hosted the session Content Strategy FTW at SxSWi.

The problem, as she sees it, is that the web writer is often disconnected from the rest of the web development team. Where there should be content strategy and SEO strategy, we're often on projects where we're focused much more on target audience personas, design standards and project management charts, instead of content. The web writer is then brought in, given the creative brief and the wireframe and two weeks to "crank out the content."

One of the more interesting panels I was able to attend at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival was called "Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized?" As status updates (via Twitter, via Facebook, via Foursquare) become increasingly important, the ability to figure out what's happening increases. As long as we can organize that data.

But beyond that, searching for products to buy, and being able to see if it's in stock near you, up to the minute, would be equally important (particularly around Christmas, when this year's version of "Tickle Me Elmo" is being fought over.)

Location-based services/games/review sites that offer check-ins are part of a much bigger picture than most people realize. They're also about very powerful, very personalized marketing. This is "Minority Report" type stuff, here, only now the cacophony of digital displays shouting at Tom Cruise has been replaced by just one: our phones.

And I'm actively giving them all the data they need to market to me.

"Brand ambassador" is one of those fungible terms in marketing - it could mean fans who are just really passionate about a brand or product and share their love on their own accord, or it could mean a branded, deliberate program by a company to find, embrace, and engage their biggest fans.

If your brand already has the former, then take a moment to consider rolling out the latter. Tap into all that enthusiasm and help serious fans of your brand to spread the word. How can you get started? One quick way to is learn from one of these great examples of successful, established brand ambassador programs. Each of them takes a different tact, ranging from cultivating technical expertise to rewarding passion to just spreading around some fun. Some are more complex (and expensive) than others, but all can teach valuable lessons.