Podcast: The Social Media Job Market Heating Up?
(35 MINUTES)
The job market for social media and marketing is taking off. Yet what the hell is social media to begin with and are marketers well-equipped to staff up and get the job of…. of… uhh… what’s the task at hand again? Oh yes — “Engage, Engage!” Today, “customer empowerment” is the new buzz term — supplanting “word-of-mouth” and “buzz” marketing. What is this all about anyway and, more importantly, how can a business owner or marketing steward actually hire talent to get the job of engaging and empowering done? Should they hire talent?
Marketers are being told to ‘engage’ their customers, form digital communities and participate in a ‘conversation’ in highly ‘authentic’ ways using this thing called social media. Problem is ’social’ isn’t clearly defined and appears to have serious interdisciplinary considerations — it seems to straddle PR, mar com, promotions, customer service just to name a few. Marketers seem ill-equipped to get the job done on the strategic (organizational) and tactical (human resources) sides. Social marketing is emerging and marketers are practicing as they pioneer. They’re trying to chase down customers that are increasingly immersed in all things digital.
But is what we’re talking about marketing at all… really? Do customers really want honest-to-goodness ‘relationships’ with marketers or do they just want more control over what and how they buy or consume? A new breed of social media agencies and service providers claim to have all the answers and, yes, they’ve convinced a good number of marketers to steam ahead rather blindly. But we know better.
So how should an organization go about hiring social marketing staff?
How should they organize and staff up?
Is it too early to even talk about this kind of thing for most companies and if so why?
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