Getting Back to Your Desk

I work on social media sitting at my desk. Does that count?

Right on, Chris.

The past few weeks, I’ve realized how much I’m beginning to dislike the same old chatter about these tools, what people don’t get and what they need to understand, etc etc. Sure, it’s great to talk about what’s working and how it was effectively used within your marketing or communications strategy, but to go off on the same old tangent doesn’t put this industry where it needs to be, but more so, doesn’t do you or your company any good.

What will be an interesting shift is how bloggers will react. There are plenty that blog about these same ideas time in and time out, but I’m interested to see who’s going to push through the floodgates and emerge with that high-level thinking and how we can and have used these tools for business (eg: yourself, Amber Naslund).

Great point.
Thanks for this useful article.

Well I’m excited – (although that could be a hangover from seeing the new Star Trek film last night) – lets get moving and really make things happen, rather than talk about making things happen.

AMEN! I remember back in the day how a certain subset of techies would get titled Microsoft Access Administrators or DB2 Gurus. Talk about pigeonholing yourself. While the software is important, it’s a tool. What’s important is the data, or in this case, the converstation & relationship.

Chris,
Hope you’re enjoying Dallas! Like the post. I agree we’re moving/have moved from the experimental stage of social media to the business case stage. The experimentation phase gave us a ‘get out of jail free’ card with respect to demonstrating and proving the business case for social media. The economy has accelerated the phase shift to the business case phase. Agree with your perspective on metrics – we need to measure the outcome or what happened as a result of the activity rather than the output/activity itself. Measure what it does and not (just) what it is. As social media matures it should be integrated across all the functions you mention. One noble goal of any digital/social media department should be to make their function obsolete by educating, integrating and embedding the SM function/expertise across all relevant departments and activities.
@donbart

I’m happy when you get ranty, because you do it when it matters.

The reason people and companies are adopting the titles of “social media manager” is because they’re not yet ready to view this as an undercurrent to all of their business. It’s still in the “channel” bucket. Putting social communication as part of the foundation of business is still a hard leap for many companies to make, whether or not we understand that they should.

At the least, this ensures that someone is owning it. Babysitting it, paying attention to it, maybe even educating about it internally. I’m hopeful that the social media people in companies are there because they’re helping to build the culture that’s necessary to realize your point: that social media is nothing more than a set of tools and methods of communication. So rather than being the managers of the tools, I’m hoping that they’re stewards of the (r)evolution.

We need translators, interpreters. We need people that can speak the language, take social media out of the toolbox and put it in the framework of business goals. I’m with you that these things need to be woven into the functions of the roles we’ve already created. But I also think we’ve got some serious room for improvement in the way we define enterprise roles in the first place, and maybe – just maybe – we’re hiring the ambassadors instead of the tool managers, the utility players instead of the rigid specialists, those that can shift the culture as well as articulate the business value as well as you do.

What you call them doesn’t matter if we understand what we need them to do. Maybe that’s the next discussion..

You hit the nail on the head. While I am relatively new to Twitter, I have had various accounts on different sites including friendster [now dead]), myspace, facebook for years; I have had email (on aol, yahoo, gmail, and university and work emails) and instant messengers (aim, yahoo, msn, icq and now skype) for even longer. While the tools may change, the same basic concept remains: these are the tools which provide a service, making communication easier – they themselves are not the communication. It doesn’t matter if you twitter, email, call, or speak in person – the actual exchange of information is what’s important. If your site is only about the tools allowing the communication and not actually providing information, it’s going to get old – and fast.

There are marketing and PR professionals out there that present content in new and fresh ways, with up-and-coming examples, which is what makes it interesting, but even so, the “end goal” here isn’t to push a certain service, but to provide resources through a service.

I spent the last week unplugging, going to a conference and connecting with friends and taking a vacation from work, my personal computer time, and otherwise just leaving behind most technology that has become a large part of my everyday life, whether at work or at home. And it was SO ENERGIZING and refreshing to connect to people on a personal level, to connect with myself without feeling like I had to justify taking ‘me’ time.

I feel that it’s just as important to connect with yourself, what your vision is for the future (whether professional or personal) and then put out there what information and expertise you have to share.

I know you didn’t just call me a tool! ;)

I am the social media & community specialist at an association and I do exactly what @Amber describes: educate staff and members about the tools and help them see how social media fits into what they’re already doing and can help them better accomplish those goals. It takes an unbelievable amount of coaxing and explaining to get people to understand what these tools are and why they’re not only useful but pretty much mandatory these days. And I am the first to admit it is tiresome as hell to have to explain a million times over WHAT Twitter is and why it isn’t a waste of time. I feel like I should be getting a cut from Twitter and Facebook, as much as I have to do the sales pitch over and over and over and over again.

IMO, association social media presents unique challenges because, in many ways, social media and associations don’t mix. Social media is about engaging on a personal level, about embracing new technologies quickly and adapting even more quickly as those technologies change: the operative word here being “quick.” Associations aren’t quick. Everything has to be vetted a million times over, mulled over, passed up the chain of leaders, etc, etc.

Anyway, I actually look forward to the day that my job becomes obsolete because everyone has fully bought into social media and expertly using the tools that apply to their specific function (e.g. PR, meeting planning, membership, etc). I guess it’s both lucky and unlucky for me that, as far as associations go at least, that day is probably a long, long way off. Lucky in that I’ll have a job for a while; unlucky that a lot of what my job entails feels like screaming into the wind, trying to get people to understand something that is so rudimentary to me yet so foreign to them.

Chris,
Thanks for the post. As usual, you give a lot to think about. I totally agree with you about social media as a tool, not a department. However, as the Social Media Coordinator for an international corporation, I am realizing more and more that the corporation needs the distinction…right now at least. If most corporations hand off the social media duties to the existing marketing or customer service department, those departments won’t have the slightest clue how to navigate social media. At least in my case, I feel like I’m not so much managing a tool as I am acting as “Social Media Horticulturist”, trying to grow and cultivate things that will one day take root in the culture of the corporation. When social media does take root, I will be able to return to my desk. Until then, I have to work my rear off to protect the little plants from being trampled by a culture that wants to treat everything like a uni-directional broadcast mechanism.

A paint brush doesn’t make the artist, an artist makes an artist. A good painter does benefit from a few quality brushes, however, to helps get his/her best work onto the canvas.

Thank you!

I’ve had a post like this floating around in my head for some time now. I am more than ready for the novelty of social media to wear off and for businesses to look at it as another marketing/communications tactic. True these tools are radically different than what most are used to, but in the end they all tie back to business objectives and goals. That’s why we are hiring for these positions and engaging in this in the first place right?

With money as tight as it is in this economy, we (businesses) can’t afford to flirt around with social media and not understand how it impacts the overall strategy of the organization.

Now we need the rest of the business world to see this post and understand that the era of social media as a shiny new toy is over. It’s time to get real and get down to business.

Ouch, does that mean I should throw out all of my business cards with the title “Social Media Manager” on them? :)

My boss and I change the title of my position every day because we know that nothing we have come up with so far accurately describes my job at HyperArts. I was hired to learn about social media and then share it with our clients as a tool, just like you described.

I agree that there are tons of people using terminology incorrectly, trying to sensationalize and publicize themselves. Social media is only just becoming mainstream, so it makes sense that we are still formulating an accepted and appropriate vocabulary. Plus, due to the viral nature of social networks, many phrases and titles and terms become “gobbledygook” so quickly!

But if social media is, in essence, the online community (gathered across various networks), and each time an individual or business develops their own micro-community they hire an assistant/specialist to manage that space (where dialogues can begin and problems are resolved), then what is wrong with calling that person a social media (aka community) manager?

Couldn't agree more Chris, but is it premature to think this is ready for mainstream acceptance in business? After all, most organisations big and small still employ comms and marketing people. Do you think its possible that the skillset / expertise / techniques could be embedded right across an organisation?

Hi Chris, great post. I think you've hit the nail on the head by asking companies to set metrics that make sense to them and align with their goals — not necessarily to the goals of their social media consultant.

I'd just add to your list of job functions that companies need to be thinking about the very profound possibilities of using social media for market research, so social media should also live in Consumer Insights or Innovation (to the extent that those departments are distinct from Marketing).

I see what you're saying re. the “Social Media Manager” and using the title of a toolset.

But couldn't the same be said of “Sales Manager” or “Marketing Manager” or “Customer Service Manager”?

Each description is correct – you manage a sales team, or a marketing team, or the customer service department. But each of these is just another tool in the overall machination of the company.

Doesn't this just make “Social Media Manager” another part of the overall toolset of the company?

Right on. And while many companies want to be on the forefront of these new ways of interacting with their customers and constituents (best word I can think of to replace “audience”), most don't. Most want someone to talk to them about how best to move people in ways that help their organization and deliver the best return on their communications and marketing investment… Once they figure out the strategy (i.e., I can find 60,000 people with the job title we're trying to reach on LinkedIn…), it's time for the experts in tools and tactics.

I should probably wait till Mercury stops being all retrograde tomorrow to comment on this. Or at least till I'm not in the ferociously bad mood that's bugged me all day. I lack the ladylike restraint to respond properly at the moment.

You can always be angry or fired up. I'm sorry you're in a bad mood. I hate when I am. But that said, it's always okay to disagree.

Great post, Chris! As a publicist who uses social media as part of my business, I'm often asked to speak about social media and how it can work for small businesses and entrepreneurs. And I always stress that social media is only one piece of the pie–it goes hand-in-hand with a thoughtful, strategic marketing communications plan. It's easy to get distracted by all the new shiny toys and forget that they are to be used in conjunction with other tactics–social media is not the holy grail.

Ha! I blogged about this myself last week, connecting it to the Zen Archer story.

Still, as a phenomenon that changes a lot about marketing, it deserves its own specialists and probably will for a long time. We still have telephone or television experts, right? We still have newspaper editors (for now, anyway).

Chris–

This was a smart, practical read. Thanks for saying what no one else is really saying yet.

Scott

I'm with amurphy13 and dislike it when people ask me to apply social media to X project. I really like that you're talking about using tools to affect the bottom line, BTW Chris. Whether its in sales or savings, how will these tools actually help, is the million dollar question.

Web site hits don't pay the bills. :)

I think that the change is coming and am happy to have a piece of driftwood to be able to ride the wave. One of the keys will be for companies to find ways to be transparent AND keep trade secrets safe from competition.

To share and profit? That is the question.

I'm with you! As Clay Shirky would say, it's only when the technology becomes invisible that things get interesting.