Last week I discovered a article on CNN that used recent research on jobs to predict the death of the social media manager. Being that this is my current role, I was immediately drawn in to learn more.
Because of the nature if social media, and its influence to effect all parts of our lives–both in our personal and our professional lives–social media is becoming everyone’s job. But that’s not good news for social media managers. Or is it?
The job market may reflect the fact that jobs titled “social media manager” may be declining, but that doesn’t mean that their job is becoming any less important. Quite the contrary. With the charge that “social is everyone’s job” these managers now have an entirely new cohort to help manage. Namely, all these new employees that are being empowered by social.
Social media managers haven’t been living in a delusional world. They understand that every human being that chooses to participate in social, can, and probably should. The fact remains that up until recently, only a few people (those currently in the roles today) had enough experience and know how to actually run social media. They are the pioneers. The ones who took the risk and saw the potential that social media offered when their counterparts were still afraid to to take the leap.
So we have all been placed upon metaphorical pillars, tasked with “figuring social out for our companies” and, in a lot of instances, to do so in our own personal silos, and sometimes, on our own.
But in the back of our minds, we knew this wasn’t how social media should operate. Especially if it was to be successful in the business world. One person can’t be the sole voice of a company, nor should they be. So we have worked diligently to help our counterparts become comfortable with social, understand engagement activity, and get a grasp on measuring the return on social (or, to be blunt, proving why we should have our jobs in the first place). And the more we talked, and shared about how successful we have been, our colleagues became curious. And the very thing they had been avoiding all this time was now a new frontier that everyone started viewing as the promised land that me and my counterparts had realized years ago. Our evangelizing of social now appears to have become our downfall.
Or has it? True, more and more employees are being charged with taking on social as part of their everyday roles an responsibilities. Yet, for most, a skills gap still exists. It’s the age old adage, “they know enough to be dangerous” that now is keeping social media managers up at night.
We’ve spent our brief careers understanding the psychology of how our customers, clients, and influencers are talking about and interacting with our companies and our brands. (Arguably, we’re still figuring it out!) Now, we have another group to understand: our fellow employees. With this new power that they have been entrusted with, will they make the right choices on social? Will they share thoughts and comments that are in line with our brand positioning? What’s going to happen when a social media gaffe happens now that we have an increased number of public relations spokespeople?
Until companies can close the social skills gap, put processes in place to address these questions, and, quite frankly, trust their employees the way they trust their social media managers, our jobs will still be important. I think a more appropriate headline would be “the transformation of the social media manager.” It definitely has a better spin to it. At least that’s my messaging to my boss!
Image courtesy of Flickr, Daniele Zedda
Social Media Geek 