If you've been paying attention to social networks and company news, you're seeing the migration of social media jobs from consulting to corporate.
It's welcome news to me — I've long said all business is social, and it's the role of the internal team to set the tone, even as they may need support and additional capacity. I should know that well, I've spent most of my career on the client side.
I've always been a business generalist. My background is primarily in brand strategy, and leading marketing, and communications — critical areas that have a significant (and measurable) impact on any organization's growth and profitability.
I do a fair deal of consulting at the moment while I'm working on what's next for me. Due to budget constraints and resource shortages, brand strategies today need to take into consideration the business environment and opportunities of different industries as well as their customers, partners, suppliers, and employees.
Social media, community, conversation, etc. come in handy as tools to open the organization to customers and the culture to employees to release creativity, co-create innovation, and remove the obstacles that are in the way of learning from each other.
We're all working on the same question —
- marketing and communication groups as earlier adopters (especially in the US)
- IT groups to implement and support the technologies
- managers to work better with teams
- customer service groups to work better with the people who pay the bills
- down to human resources teams figuring out that they know a whole lot more about their business than recruiters who present the least bad candidate and safest option
All of which the business desperately needs to compete and win in the market.
Freelancers won't "normalize" social media. Businesspeople will — because it's not that damn hard. Business is.
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0 responses to “Freelancers Won’t “Normalize” Social Media. Business People Will”
That’s a very good observation, and it reminds of a similar trend during the early Internet days (1996) when the number of corporate Internet-related jobs sky-rocketed with an amazing array of variety (I once compiled a list of about 200 various job titles with “Internet” in them).
What would be interesting is to go below the surface and look at the different types of jobs with a social media component and we’ll probably see the astounding variety, e.g. social media governance, social media partnerships, director of social media, social media content writer, social media community mgr, SM Marketing Mgr, etc.
Relevant article from today, How to Hire for Social Media Management
http://www.socialfish.org/2011/06/how-to-hire-for-social-media-management.html
I didn’t know Indeed offered trends! That’s pretty cool. From the looks of the top 10 trends over there, it’s obvious that businesses are looking more and more toward skills which support social initiatives.
The fact that we’re still seeing so much focus on “social media,” Twitter, Facebook, et al., suggests to me that many of these businesses still don’t quite get it. Consider the graph for “email.” In the last five years, Indeed shows a 5% drop in demand, from just under 15% of postings mentioning “email” to just under 10% in January of this year.
Email is a tool – not a skill.
The same goes for social media.
Email is used to accelerate communication across the organization and between stakeholders around the world. Business figured that one out.
Social media really isn’t that different. We are all customers. “Business needs” revolve around people.
Like you said, Valeria, “It’s not that damn hard.” 🙂