Musings and gems from a native New Yorker, digital marketer, media maven, culture junkie, and style enthusiast. I'll mostly post things related to advertising, marketing, social media, and technology - but be prepared for moments of diversion...especially relating to art, literature, music, fashion, zombies, comic books, and my cat :-)
A pal just sent me a question about what to charge for a social media project she’s been commissioned for and it inspired me to post this.
The above screenshot is a kind of job listing that would have worked in 2008, but it no longer does, unless it is to manage the most rudimentary parts of social media management (culling Twitter handles of influencers, fetching coffee, resizing JPEGs.) Lately, in my perilous travels across the social media career wilderness, I’m still finding a profusion of “intern”, “unpaid”, and “for-exposure” positions. I think while companies used to be able to get away with passing these roles down to assistants and interns in the past, people are finally beginning to understand how to measure, track, and develop web- and social-based content campaigns that you can’t just delegate that kind of responsibility to someone who has no experience in looking at numbers and figuring out how to grow different social channels and how to make those results happen through creative content initiatives. It’s a big liability for any business to hand over their entire online branding strategy to someone who has no monetary stake in the future of that business. The big agencies, media outlets, and companies already know that to make
Yesterday, I came across one example of where I think social media management/production roles should be headed: This listing for a new Social Media/Audience Experience Manager at the New York Observer (Hi, Elizabeth!)—it’s not the first of its kind, but it’s definitely setting the tone for how social roles will grow and evolve these next few years.
Interns will make for great grunt workers, putting things into spreadsheets or resizing JPEGs, but social media managers are going to be the point people to consider things in terms of words, numbers, and concepts. They will have a stake in a business’ well-being and connecting to new consumers. They will make sense of content and statistics and other information and figure out ways to make it connect to people.
I think we’re entering an age where editorial and sales goals can no longer exist independently of one another. These people are going to be obsessed with words and numbers in equal measure. Perhaps if the print version of social media managers existed, that world wouldn’t have collapsed as epically as it did.
I know that a lot of businesses are concerned about budgets for this kind of role—maybe that’s a side effect from being shellshocked throughout the recession—but digital distribution is booming, and “interns” are definitely not the solution to that.
There’s also the matter that a lot of people don’t even consider email marketing one of the most venerable forms of social; this itself adds a considerable workload for anyone functioning in this capacity.
Which is basically to say that if you’re a business trying to get results by budgeting $0 for all social media programs, you may end up with exactly what you’re willing to invest.
Google+ to Twitter: “We see your 28 languages and raise you 32″
Having a social product be available in as many different languages as possible is key to having success globally. Today, Twitter announced that it is now available in an impressive… http://goo.gl/qzTsG
My 3 minutes a month on Google+ will now be spent translating Google+ posts.
A nipple, a mustache and a leg walk into a bar… Jennifer Lopez, Bradley Cooper and Angelina Jolie’s respective body parts (aka the Oscars’ scene-stealers) have all joined twitter:
Vía @socialmedia2day :Five Types of Social Media Influencers
A list which corresponds very well to the five main types of influencers that found on social media:
- The networker (Social Butterfly): one who has the biggest contact list and found on all platforms. He or she who knows everybody and everybody knows him or her.
- The opinion leader (Thought Leader): one who can become the best ambassador of a brand. He or she has built a strong authority in his or her field by based on credibility. Their messages are most often commented on and retweeted.
- The discoverer (Trendsetter): one who is always the first to use a new platform. Constantly on the lookout for new trends, they become the “hub” in the sector.
- The sharer (Reporter): one who distributes information to the bloggers to journalists through the specialized webzines. He or she usually amplify messages.
- The user (Everyday Customer): one that represents the regular customer. He or she does not have a network as large as the networker, but his or her network remains equally important.
Klout says I’m a “specialist.” Kind of bummed that I’m a specialist in #marketing and not #zombies.
