DISQUS

Michael Durwin · 9 months ago

I think you got off track a bit here. As someone who came up through the web craze from the early 90s on, I can appreciate the parallels. The thing is, at the time, one person could and HAD TO be a web master since no company would dedicate the resources to entire departments dedicated to each task. In 1994 I was creating the graphics, the layout, writing the content, developing the code, even promoting a site on bulletin boards (yes, long before the term social media popped up. Hell, I even used HotorNot to promote my band). In a very short time of course, businesses saw the need to take web strategies seriously.

Fast forward to 10 years later. How many companies have budgets and talent dedicated to community management? How about content development? Widget execution? Social analytics? Until they do, you'll see the term social media expert used often. These poor suckers will have thread bare budgets, be expected to perform miracles, with no staff, while having to manage all aspects of a social media campaign.

I'm curious myself what titles will manifest themselves over the next decade. Alot of the comments I've read here break themselves into several categories:

Those who think social media is a fad. I remember you guys laughing my out of your office when I pitched you the idea of having a web site. "Where's the money in that?"

Those who are tied up in semantics: social media v. social marketing.

Those who saw the birth and maturity of the web as a tool for business and see the value in a hybrid at a time when few understand what is going on never mind agreeing to pay for a team of specialists!

Jason Kintzler · 1 year ago

Great post as usual Louis. I think the social media "expert" will have still have a place, from a business sense, for longer than you think. Your comparison to an "email expert" or a "telephone specialist" is probably correct, however I still get hit up by agencies with "email marketing expertise" and I'm pretty sure (telephone) customer service agencies are still alive and thriving. Utilizing social media correctly, responsibly and effectively requires understanding and engagement- not only do you have to know how it works- you have to know how to relate that to a brand, a business, a PR campaign, etc. Building a Facebook page is easy- making a brand benefit from having it is the trick.
Corporations are still looking to spend money on the "web" or "internet", not social media. Because of this, I believe these "experts" have a place- and more jobs to come.

Luigi Centenaro · 1 year ago

Maybe Social Media Marketing Expert will last longer?
:)

Chris Kenton · 1 year ago

I think you make a great point, but I think there's more to it than this. If, as a ~Social Media Expert~, your only value add is being able to leverage Digg or StumbleUpon or Twitter to be the "innovation driver" for a marketing campaign, than yes, you're the equivalent of an Webmaster. And if an agency hires someone like that to be their Social Media Expert, I wouldn't put much stock in the agency.

There's a lot below the waterline of all the Web 2.0 hype, just as there was a lot below the waterline when the Web took off. Social media has serious implications on the operations of enterprise marketing, and it follows on a long trajectory of disruptive changes that have been moving in a discernible line for three generations. It is seriously disrupting the status quo of all the traditional power players in marketing. If people dismass that as "Webmaster" stuff, they're going to have their lunch money taken before they know it.

Edwin Khodabakchian · 1 year ago

I agree with Louis on that one: social media as a fabric is interesting because people trust more their friends and some of the industry experts and if people feel that that trust is violated/manipulated, they will move on. social media means: customers will do your marketing so treat them better than ever. people will only talk about things they feel strongly about so invest all your money on differentiation and quality. the media itself is so distributed that there is little hope crafting and controlling the message, the beauty of it is that thanks to summize and friendfeed, it is a truely transparent medium so if you know how to listen, you can get broad real-time feedback.

I am curious: what are some of the services that social media experts offer?

Edwin Khodabakchian · 1 year ago

I actually re-read the post and thought more about this. I guess that if you are a larger company with already established product management and customer support processes in place, a social media expert could help you define a path for enhancing those existing processes to better leverage the emerging social media tools.

jonathanhopkins · 1 year ago

Great post. Agreed. I call it web participation and think that social media is a part of it ;) Right now though, the word social media is used just because that's an easy way to describe things. That as you point out, will quickly become old hat as all that magical stuff that's just around the corner comes into play.

kosso · 1 year ago

Pre-web, I was designing multimedia CD-ROMS. Around 1993, I realised to could work for "anyone, anywhere" - It was "it's not where you ARE, it's where you're '@'" (back in the days when I had to explain what the '@' symbol meant ;) )

Back in the day, people used to call me a 'guru'. Some still do. But I have always had 'Createc' as my title.

It's future-proof. And fun! :)

Technically Creative? or Creatively Technical. Either way works for me ;)

( right-brain / left-brain harmony )

Shey · 1 year ago

I love this post -- felt this way for a while and I'm sure others have too. No doubt you'll get some of the "Social Media Experts" giving you flack for it.

"Web browsing expert" LOL!

keif · 1 year ago

I can't help but agree 100%. Social Media is the "new buzz" that everyone is re-branding themselves as being experts with/in/as/etc. I see a lot of people entering into the "title" when what they really are, are marketing/PR people trying to capitalize on the latest trend.

Anyone that calls themselves a "social media expert" I'm very leery about, especially what they are exactly an "expert" in.

jeffsonstein · 1 year ago

just as there will be work for folks who know how to integrate a Web presence, so I would predict organizations will need folks who know how to integrate social networking. I think you are "spot on" pointing out that it will just become part of the landscape, part of the basic toolset and basic understanding-of-reality needed by all technology workers.

philbaumann · 1 year ago

"Web browsing expert...email expert...telephone specialist" Those are great analogies. I know social media can be a bit deeper than that, but these are useful points you make here.

It does seem that right now bringing the late adopters up to speed is the primary focus in terms of career choice. Of course, there will be specialist who can be outsourced (just like SEO), but social media isn't Rocket Engineering; the whole point of social media is for 'users' to be the specialist.

If Democratization is the goal, wouldn't we expect most participants to do their own marketing? If social media doesn't help participants participate, then it isn't social media.

So, I think you've hit an important nail. It's advice the gurus aught to heed well, lest they become telephone specialists.

Jim Kukral TheBizWebCoach · 1 year ago

You know, I still get calls from people every day not "in the biz" like we are asking me things like "what's a blog and how can we use one?" My point is... the people who really even know about this "social" stuff are still such a very, very much so minority.

jrsven · 1 year ago

Agree - and I think it's easy for people in this space to lose that perspective. Go talk to a restaurant owner - twitter, mitter, chitter, litter...its all blogalese. They just want to increase business and connect with customers.

Alex Hammer · 1 year ago

Expertise is valuable. Integrated and networked expertise is POWER.

Wayne Gretzky's success (as he explained it) was that he doesn't skate to where the puck is, he skates to where it is going ot be.

As a result, don't look at who is most prominent on the scene. When the top players start going under the radar, often they've moved to where the puck is going to be.

jrsven · 1 year ago

Seesmic video reply from james svenson.

Josh Dilworth · 1 year ago

Louis -- awesome post -- and, as supporting evidence, at least anecdotally, I know of 3 different very high-profile social media experts who already have or are planning to segue into something else because they see their role as more of a job and less of a career per se. Even at marketing and PR firms where these individuals are in relatively high demand right now, the internal goal (correctly) is to move towards a place where social media becomes a core competency, part of everyone's collective toolbelt -- and therefore no longer just some dude or gal in a corner who what what the heck machinima is. (A lot of firms talk like this is the already the case in their organization but it's just that -- talk.) Hehe. Any true social media expert spends the bulk of his or her time teaching -- the endgame is that you teach yourself out of a job. I agree with Jason that these roles will never truly vanish, but we are well past the peak in my mind and again, a number of high-profile people have clearly seen the writing on the wall, and I've been thinking about this same issue a lot myself. The Webmaster is a great analogy.

John Wesley · 1 year ago

"There's no money to be made Digging up stories, hitting the StumbleUpon button or refreshing FriendFeed or Twitter, after all."

True, but there is a boat load of money in using these sites to drive traffic and attention to a business. That is the ability a social media expert should have, above merely being a user.

Jay Cuthrell · 1 year ago

Of course! We all know that every major corporate institution these days just turns loose random teams of employees and just uploads Save as HTML files to their web servers. Good thing those "webmaster" types went the way of the dinosaur. It was getting so complicated before we could just use Microsoft Office to do everything we needed. [/end thick luxurious sarcasm]

I think you are overlooking the possibility that "webmaster" was a term that HR could agree upon instead of "Hyper Text Markup and File Transfer Engineer Grade IV Band Level II".

Your last paragraph seems like a longer version of "don't quit your day job". Are you implying that the concepts born of so-called social media are going the way of HTML jockeys? I still don't see a great deal of understanding of what makes the web work in any areas outside those that dabbled or had careers in it.

Web anything is still frustrating for those that believe in the WYSIWYG in business where there is the one VP or CxO that has a browser issue they assert as being the underlings failing.

TV shows like The Big Idea are primarily focused on marketing concepts and success -- so if the market wants "social media" I expect it will show up there. I doubt we'd have seen a webmaster talking about the intricacies of the tech babble below the covers.

SilentJay74 · 1 year ago

Louis...you HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!!!!! Thank you for posting this! My question is, why do some of these people consider them selves experts? Does it make a difference on a resume how many followers you have on Twitter? I think not.
People (Especially the SMC) need to rethink their cause. Social Media Club? I think not... a better title for that organization is Social Marketing Club.

amandavega · 1 year ago

I think you hit it on the head with "Social Media is simply part of the landscape, in the background. Social media offers tools for communications and information sharing, but it's a means to an end, not the end itself." This is the part that most miss - those that peddle themselves as experts and all they do is set up social network accounts and a blog for clients, and those that buy into them because they read somewhere in the paper that social media is where it all is. Now, of course, we offer social media management as an expertise as well. (Among a milion other tools in our arsenal from our team of nerds that has been around the space for over 17 years - we are all original "portal" geeks...) Where we see "social media" fit into the mix is usually one of three things: public relations (either they want more reach for media to find them,) search engine optimization (they really need additional help with inbound links and content,) or community management (well, ok, in some cases in reputation management - which I suppose is really PR.) We too see it as just another way to participate in the conversation. And there is some art (and some money) in knowing when to digg, how to even download and get things like commentful to work, and how they all work together given that they (among the other 200+ social bookmarks, trackback tools, etc. that we work with daily) can go away in a heartbeat. But, yah, to sell that as a stand alone, with no other plan, simply doesn't make any sense. It reminds me of the days of "well, go out and get us one of those web site things" as well. Good post!

stevenimmons · 1 year ago

I understand what you are saying in terms of Social Media experts and the new cool 'label'. I think there are genuine experts in this domain, and this definitely crosses a number of technical and commercial realms. I like to think of Social Media experts as being those with strong knowledge management, team building skills and skilled in the science of collaboration driving communications through Enterprise 2.0. I understand the temptation to see it all as 'spin', but don't forget collaboration technologies have been researched for decades (CSCW) and some of us have been around these developments for 15+ years.

Imad Salloum · 1 year ago

I am employed with the ITVS the producers of Independent Lens airing every Tuesday on PBS as a Social Media Marketing Coordinator. There are jobs but its a good idea to get familiar with Web Analytics to show your company that such efforts due produce results. Best of luck.

Hawaii_Real_Estate · 1 year ago

Yes, back in the day I had a foosball table and called myself a web master. Now I have a ping pong (http://www.dazadi.com/Game-Rooms/Game-Tables/Ta...) table and call myself a social marketer. Very small changes with better results!

Tim Moore · 9 months ago

I think there is a difference between a single person, or even a small size company,and the effect that a social media "consultant" or "expert", whatever you call them, has. In fact, it likely is none. However, at the same time for a medium to larger business who may have been a slow adopter to using social tools, groups, etc, to engage and interact with their current and prospective customers (wherever they are - and that is the first thing the social media person would need to research) is going to be critical in the days, months and years ahead. Social behavior and buying processes have changed and are unlikely to revert. Add to that the need to monitor product reviews (for logistics and procurement), internal engagement by employees, HR and refreshing talent pools, and many other areas, all will require companies to embrace a comprehensive, well devised social media strategy, adjust current methodoligies, or will fall behind and end up suffering.

Just hope this balances things. Good post.