“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

Social Media Monitoring Is Essential to Business – SmartBlog has another great post this week on how social media monitoring can be used to do something actionable. Social media monitoring is one, quantifiable way for marketers to evaluate their social media efforts.

Key Takeaway: It’s one thing to listen. It’s something entirely different to do something about it. Understanding where a brand stands in social media speaks volumes when developing a social media plan, and being able to set a benchmark for where a brand stands today to compare to after a brand has taken action in the social space is one other way to show success. It can also inform your content strategy.

The Ever-Evolving Role of Social Media Within Agencies – The role of social media within agencies has changed, and in an interview with Digiday, Matt Britton of MRY discusses the role social media has played when his company was founded compared to today.

Key Takeaway: The primary role of social media services from agencies is no longer (and shouldn’t be) helping brands create Facebook Pages and set up Twitter accounts. There’s a time and place for that, but the long-term vision for an agency should be for agencies to provide a strategic lens and executional support when needed. At the end of the day, clients should own the relationships with their consumers. It’s the agency’s job to be experts on the space and to identify opportunities. It’s the client’s job to be connected to and maintaining relationships with consumers.

The Limit of Sharing – AdAge breaks down Zuckerberg’s Law, the idea that year over year people will double the amount of information they share. The article discusses how Mark Zuckerberg has worked to make this happen on Facebook and the ramifications of it all.

Key Takeaway: There is an absolute limit to sharing. People like a degree of simplicity to their social platforms. MySpace got too complicated. Users migrated to Facebook. Now, Facebook Timelines and News Tickers are being inundated with sharing, sharing and more sharing, and often that sharing is automated. Recent partnerships, like the one with Apple, will only increase the amount of sharing. Facebook must strike a careful balance between allowing apps to share to Facebook, keeping users happy and not overwhelmed with information and proving value to advertisers. All of these factors compete with each other, so it’s not an easy challenge to overcome.