The rise of the social media professionals
The other day I wrote about how the massive growth of content begets the need for smarter and more efficient content aggregation. Because so much interaction, communication, and commerce now takes place online, it has become more critical for companies to deploy new legions of social media professionals to promote, educate, engage, and mitigate problems in the online medium.
The trick is to do it in a way that people like and will even seek out. Promotion is less about transmitting a one-way communication and more about engaging and having ongoing conversations than ever before. And according to Ben Parr at Mashable, at the least, jobs for social media marketers aren’t going to go away anytime soon.
Parr points to a Jeremiah Owyang piece that is collecting a list of “social computing strategists and community managers for enterprise corporations.” It’s interesting to scan through the list and look at all the big time companies that are now employing such folk in full time roles, including Intel, IBM, Cisco, HP, Yahoo, Sony, and Nokia. Even many outside the traditional tech space are getting into the act, such as General Motors, JetBlue, American Express, and Best Buy.
Parr concludes that “the companies that fill those roles now will be ahead of the game.” I’d have to agree. Ad buys and other kinds of traditional PR and marketing efforts will still play a great role, but enduring social media relationships are and will be a bedrock for maintaining and acquiring customers.
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