Sean is a young guy in his first agency, hired because he understands social, right? Carrie is a little older and has worked in marketing for nearly a decade. Her boss has asksed her to take on the department’s social strategy – because she’s senior yet still young enough to get it. Eric is a marketing director and worries that his career might slip away if he doesn’t start building his social profile outside and inside the enterprise.
How do these people find help?
Social media skills are becoming extremely important to employees, yet I think there is a very significant skills gap here.
Many people in social media are not really prepared for their new roles. They have to effectively create a new job spec. They have to fit into a fast moving environment out on the web. And like Carrie and Eric they may have to make a new internal social policy work when the company has little experience of it. They have to make what they do relevant for strategy when social media ROI is a pretty difficult metric to get a handle on. They have to do it all in public.
By this time next year we’ll all be looking back at 2012 and saying wow, the explosion of social media inside the workplace has been one of the most amazing disruptors I’ve seen in business. Companies like Dell have a lead because they’ve trained over 6,000 staff in social. Social is a new competitive battleground. But people are still having to self-service their skills’ development – even after training.Companies need to train employees to relate to customers through social channels. But they must also invest in people’s ability and willingness to take on significant social roles inside and outside the walls.
I notice when I write about this topic, I get an uptick in Twitter followers and many of those new followers will be social media newbies or experts with very small Twitter followings.
They are like Sean, Carrie and Eric, folks who need to grasp a new skills set, yes. But folks who also will be practicing that skill in public, on the web, in front of a potentially critical audience made up of more experienced social media people and customers. They need to grow some kind of following even while they are learning their craft.
There are some great writers out there with really solid advice for people who have begun to find their way around.
Darren Rowse and Copyblogger are great sources for the mechanics of how content works online, Social Media Today is stream of good and topical advice, this article on Mashable about how to create a good blog following is one of the best I’ve read, and on socialmediaexaminer last week Kristi Hines wrote a great piece on how to use your Google + account to build SEO power.
Tags: Business, Careers, CIO Network, CMO Network, Leadership, Media Entertainment, Social Media, Tech, Entertainment, Copyblogger, Darren Rowse, Dell, Flickr, Social network,Twitter,YouTube, Improve, influence, media, Skills, Social
Via: Forbes
