For most people who are using social media inline with the rest of their job duties, the social media part of their job is effortless. After all, how much work does it take to maintain a Twitter account or Facebook fan page? The set-up is the hardest part, then you only need to keep up with it. Sure, it’s time consuming, but it’s fun and you know it. For me, I maintain several social marketing channels for the company I work for, while ALSO being the graphic designer, web designer, blogger, product manager, and event manager, and anything else you can think of. Trust me, if I can keep up, anyone can.
But even though the market is super unstable right now, I’ve recently seen dozens of new jobs popping up for “Social Media Coordinator” or “Senior Communications Manager” or “Director Social Media Marketing”. All this says to me is “we don’t get this, please somebody come in and do it for us”. I mean sure, I’d love to be the person hired where all I do all day is social network, but (and this depends on the company and their actual need), I’d certainly know in the back of my mind that the position was utterly silly since someone already on their staff could do it themselves. Most of these jobs don’t even include ad sales or metrics. But hey, pay me 60k to keep you ignorant, no problem.
With all of these new social media jobs open, now is prime time for college students to get jobs right out of school. Companies are paying reasonable salaries to kids who just happened to have been born at the right time. The average experience requirement on half of these job listings is 1-3 years. When is the last time you saw a “director” position require 1-3 years of experience? Prime-time to be a high school dropout I guess.
Companies are just throwing money at a position that they can’t even create an intelligent job listing for. Why? Because they’re not even 100% sure about what the job will entail. They’re basically saying, “Make us more money please! WE WANT TO BE HIP! But we have no idea what MYFACE or SPACEBOOK is!”
I’m not saying that some companies don’t need someone dedicated to social media.
Agencies and consultants with clients need to be on top of their game, they require someone on staff with expert knowledge that they can show off to clients. They can’t afford to slip on the “what’s hot” front. But if you are using social media to “connect” with your audience, hiring someone outside your company is absurd.
The point of social networking is to create a repertoire with your users, fans, whatever. If you’re hiring someone outside of your company that doesn’t know diddly about your business to represent you online, how exactly does that make you trustworthy? That’s like telling your users to leave a message with your receptionist.
I’m seeing this rolled up into jobs as well. I know that I’ve been taking on some of the social media facing parts of my company with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. I think more and more people are accidentally falling into these positions as well.
Great post! I definitely agree with it wholeheartedly. If only more of our peers were into this stuff.
I think most companies creating social media depts are missing the point. They’re just masking traditional communication techniques with a new technology. The real power of social media is its ability to connect employees with consumers, bypassing the banner waving communication department.
I think its great that companies are beginning to understand the power of social media, but I have doubts that most of them really get it.
with these ‘job’ openings; wouldn’t it make sense for an organization to have a marketing and/or communications liaison as well as someone from IT co-op a social media project;(currently myself and a marketing gal are spear-heading our new enterprise 2.0 initiatives)makes more sense to utilize existing labor pools within the organization while identifying hidden talents as well as cross pollinating knowledge within the org…just my 2 cents
my thoughts exactly. why outsource social networking to someone who is unfamiliar with your company, when you already have loyal employees? especially when it comes to trusting this person with the voice of your brand.