7 Social Media Roles You Haven’t Considered

When you think of social media roles, chances are you think of a community manager or the oh-so-generic “social media manager”, which is usually some function of the marketing department managing strictly social media programs. But there are loads of other potential roles that can integrate or represent social media alongside other business areas.

Considering these is one of the primary ways to really integrate and entrench social media and its implications throughout the business, not just isolated in the communications department. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

Social Phone Operator

At Radian6, we have folks that help us man the front lines of what we call our Listening Grid. They’re responsible for manning the dashboard, picking up the alerts, and routing posts that require engagement or attention to the right people on the community, support, or account teams. In the case of mature organizations, this can easily be a full-time role, but for companies just getting started in social media, it can probably be part of someone (or several people’s) jobs.

Existing Roles that might incorporate this: customer support specialists, tech-savvy receptionists, department assistants or coordinators

Lead Generation

Yes, there are leads making themselves known in social media. By listening carefully to the discussions around your brand, competition, or specific market or industry, you can spot when people are seeking out the kind of products or services you provide. We call this Listening at the Point Of Need. There’s also plenty of opportunity to just track down where your prospects are present in social media, and start contributing and participating in the discussions they’re having to get acquainted in a non-threatening, friendly way.

These can even be more junior roles (if overseen by someone who understands the social space), wrapped into other kinds of lead generation activity like research or direct response programs.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: sales coordinators, sales assistants, community coordinators, marketing coordinators, development assistants

Social Business Development

Hush with you that social media can’t be good for B2B (I’ve been doing social media in B2B for two years and it’s working just fine, thank you). Yesterday, we just took people to the golf course or dinner to get to know them more intimately. Now, geography isn’t an issue, and we can have a meaningful conversation with a prospect via Twitter, or make an initial connection in the comments on our blog. (Remember, the tools are what you make of them).

If your prospects are out there using forums, blogs, social networks, or anywhere you can have a discussion, you can supplement your offline business development with some great online touchpoints.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: community managers, sales/business development professionals, account managers, development or fundraising pros, client service teams

Social Customer Service & CRM

Perhaps the most obvious role is that of dedicated customer service for social media channels. Whether that’s a Twitter fleet or a blog or forum posse, you can dedicate resources to handling customer service issues in online environment and either solving them directly, or getting them to more efficient and thorough existing channels.

You also have the opportunity to add social media channels to the arsenal of client and account management. And yes, this can be one part of a community role, but folks in your account, support or service departments with an interest in social media can also be outstanding resources.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: customer service or support roles of any kind, client services, account management

Internal Community Manager

It might be obvious to segment your community managers’ responsibilities into specific markets or verticals you serve, depending on the complexity of your company or organization. But what might be less obvious is that you have an internal community that needs support, too, namely your employees and team members. Having someone dedicated to listening to them, creating content, and providing a bridge to management and other areas of the organization can be a valuable consideration.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: human resources or training/professional development roles, internal communications

Social Logistics/Operations Managers

The social media work doesn’t always have to be on the front lines. For companies deploying more robust social media programs, there are information technology needs/requirements, guidelines and policies to be written and maintained, teams to manage and coordinate in varying disciplines, and budgets to manage. Perhaps you have staff that uses social media personally but not professionally, or they have an interest but on the more strategic side, rather than being out there engaging on their own. You might consider how to give some of the operational responsibilities to folks with those skills.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: operations managers, IT professionals, managers of departments engaged in social media

Analysts

You may or may not already have a research or analyst department, but there’s a whole slew of insights that come through the social media sphere. Looking closely at the data and extracting some key indicators and ensuing recommendations is what can really take your social media efforts from surface-scraping to wired into the business.

Existing roles that might incorporate this: data analysts, project/department managers with analytical skills

There are undoubtedly more, and I’m sure I’ve missed some potential matches in the existing roles.

But does this get you thinking? Are you experimenting with integrating social stuff into roles inside your company, or do you have ideas? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

image by David Spender

Hiring For Social Media: What I’d Look For

In my previous posts on, I pointed out some good and some bad on the social media job front. A few asked what I thought social media jobs should look like, so I’ll do my best. But I’m not going to write this like a typical job description, because I think the content is more important than the format.

Social media-exclusive jobs are okay for now, as foundation building for companies needing to learn the ins and outs, understand intent and strategy, and educate their internal folks. But eventually, these kinds of jobs will fall by the wayside (or at least evolve) when social media becomes part of each and every role in one way or another, perhaps with specialists that have particular experience in application of the tools within their roles. (Think of it this way: we don’t have email managers that do nothing but. The *use* of email and digital stuff touches every role, whether it’s inward or outward facing).

Attributes

In my experience, the folks who grok social media best have a lot of attributes in common:

Curiosity: The desire to explore new ideas, in detail, and without specific direction to do so. Curiosity about the intersection of human interactions and technology is a specific aspect that’s helpful, and a passion for the potential of the work and the organization’s purpose is key to instilling that in others, both internally and externally.

Innovation: Ignore the buzzy nature of this word for a moment and concentrate on what it really means: the introduction of something new. Social media implementation requires new approaches to existing processes, both internally and externally, including communication, strategy, execution, measurement, reporting, and training. (This needs to be carefully balanced with realism and pragmatism, too, but I’d rather rein someone in than have to prod them forward.)

Motivation: Folks thriving in social media jobs are self-starters, often capable of creating clarity from a bit of chaos, and devising their own marching orders without constant direction or specific instructions. If you can instill and nurture this in others, too, so much the better.

Collaboration: “That’s not my job” and “get out of my sandbox” don’t play well in these kinds of roles. They’re far too new to be that rigid, and they definitely need cooperation and work with others across the organization.

Translation: In many companies right now, we need people that have the patience and clarity of explanation to teach others about the impact of the social web, and who work well across departments within a corporate culture. These roles, most critically, need to know how to work and educate across silos, in the terms that make sense to the relevant colleagues.

Humility: The goal here is to elevate the entire company and your colleagues as contributing, valuable members of the community and leaders in the industry. Not you and your “personal brand”.

Diplomacy: Social media roles are today’s change agents. If you expect instant sea change inside your company without a lot of legwork, communication, negotiation, discussion, education, and trial and error, this job is NOT for you. And the outside community will present challenges to you; you need to be able to handle them with patience and tact. It’s a balance of emotional intelligence here.

Connectivity and Awareness: This is a people job, inside and out (and I don’t just mean community roles). You need to be able to talk to people, work with them, socialize with them, connect with them in multiple places. Understand how the network and the people in it need you (and don’t), and how all of those interactions work together to encourage more, deeper, and better connections that ultimately elevate the quality of your work and company.

Expertise

Business Process/Planning and Analysis: From the mid level on up, you want someone who understands financial frameworks for profit and loss, strategic and long range planning (including how to write goals and objectives), and how to map out execution at a tactical level. The key here is the ability to think at a global company level, not within a silo, and not in a linear fashion.

Social Media Anthropology & Participation: If you have someone spearheading social media, I feel pretty strongly that they need to be using it themselves in order to fully understand its implications and unique culture. Yes, that means familiarity with the most widely known tools and technologies, and some of the most consistent and popular applications (for better and for worse) of same, and interest and observation of what’s new on the scene (without the tendency to chase everything new because it is). Academic knowledge is good, applied is even better.

Hedgehog Management: Social media programs that are well thought out have lots of moving parts to manage and drive. People who excel at social media jobs can tackle projects that span multiple networks or areas, and keep all the pieces moving toward a bigger, crystal clear goal (or in Jim Collins’ terms, Hedgehog Concept).

Customer or Client Service: Whether it’s a formal title or not, you really want someone who has experience communicating with customers directly, and fostering those relationships in order to meet their business goals. The most powerful bit of social media is in mobilizing those relationships.

Written Communication Skills: Yep. Sorry, folks. I think this one is really imperative. So much communication and engagement online is in the form of written communication. If you can’t write coherently and professionally, you’re going to struggle. On this note, I also think a lot of social media positions will and should include elements of content marketing, which means that the ability to create and contribute solid content is key.

Social Media Roles And Responsibilities

Again, let me say that I’m writing this from the POV of a job that’s heavily or exclusively social media, and I don’t think these jobs will exist like this forever. And this is a broad, sweeping list that’s not meant to tie to any one job description (though I’m quite certain I have experience bias), but instead give you things to consider if you’re in need of a role like this in your company. A few things that might fall under this umbrella:

• Establish and use listening platforms to gauge the health of the brand online, and potential for participating in new communities
• Build outreach initiatives outside of sales or marketing goals to give our brand a personality and voice within the industry and the communities we care about
• Engage the community actively and responsively, both in relevant outpost communities and existing resident channels (like brand communities), and teach and empower team members to do the same, with consistency and clarity
• Build training programs to help other areas of the company learn and tap the potential of social media for their roles
• Collaborate on internal communication programs to inform and educate around social media initiatives and their broader implications
• Create and facilitate content in multiple media to further engagement goals, both internally and externally, and contribute resources and expertise to prospective and existing community members
• Consume, curate, and share relevant, interesting industry information and content with internal and external communities.
• Understand and observe the parallels and implications of other online activities, including web analytics, email, and search
• Communicate and collaborate on how social media activities impact other business operations, including customer support, human resources, product development, sales and business development, and translate online community and social learnings into business insights
• Establish relevant metrics (new or existing) to map the impact of social media activities in both a qualitative and quantitative fashion, and amend strategies based on learnings and patterns

Reporting wise, I’d put this position under whomever is charged with driving customer experience and a sustainable, positive company presence through online channels, and whatever business function is being most heavily supported by these initiatives. That might be someone in PR, marketing, customer service, client or donor relations, even product management. It needs, in whatever case, to report in to someone who gets the importance and potential of this, even if they don’t necessarily understand the “how”.

Your Turn

There’s no way my list can be exhaustive, nor can it possibly cover every subtlety and nuance of individual positions based on unique business needs. I’m painting with a broad brush, with the hope that it gets the gears turning for all of us to think critically about how these positions fit into business, from multiple perspectives.

So I need to hear from you! What’s missing? What would you included or have you included in your job descriptions? What have you seen that articulates the need for these jobs well? I can’t wait for you to weigh in. Comments are yours.

Social Media is a Co-Op

How many times have you asked this, or heard it asked?

Yes, but who OWNS social media? Is it marketing? PR? Customer service?

My answer? Yes.

You see, we’ve gotten so very matrixed and hierarchical in our approach to accountability and leadership (in everything, not just social media). We’ve told ourselves that something can’t possibly function unless we have one tie to tug, one person or role to point a finger at, one department with which to leave all the heavy lifting or all the glory (while giving ourselves the excuse that, well, that’s in their department).

Tomorrow’s successful and groundbreaking social businesses simply won’t see things that way.

The answers to how social applies inside our companies should never be one dimensional. Because social media isn’t vertical. It isn’t horizontal. It’s a business model that – if deployed well – permeates the very structure and practice of a business. It doesn’t just trickle down a spreadsheet into someone’s budget or list of accomplishments. It’s not a checklist.

But when it comes to management, hierarchies are cleaner. Excluding people by roles or functions is less messy, mostly because it requires less discussion. Parking social media in a singular box means that we somehow can understand and relate to it more familiarly. We can skip the hard work of weaving it throughout our enterprise. For if we label it as PR, we can therefore take the short road to the purpose, ownership, and even the measurements that PR has always implied. Right?

What a terrible waste that is.

The sustainable social organization will embrace the art of team-based innovation and leadership, and the collective accountability that goes along with it. They’ll build social media like a co-op. Driven by a team united voluntarily, toward common goals, and equally invested in the outcomes.

Collaboration is not just a feel-good buzzword. It’s the idea that our business is built more efficiently through shared knowledge, and shared responsibility. That multiple disciplines work together in order to see – from varied angles of expertise – how an organization works and can excel. What it’s challenges are. How to allocate resources, solve problems, innovate. Together.

The customers that we say we are trying to connect with do not care what our job description is or what department we work for. They care that we want to bring them inside the walls and make them a vital part of our business. No one department or discipline alone can accomplish that.

If you’re going to tell me you need to know which budget this fits in or whose strategic plan this falls under, I’m going to tell you all of them. It is your responsibility as a leader in your company to stop staring in the mirror when looking for how to achieve something greater, and start looking down the hallway. Across the aisle. Across the world. Check your ego at the door and realize that transformational ideas rarely have a singular source.

Find a team that cares enough to evaluate how and where social can make an impact. Let enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion be the criteria for participation, not rank and file. Put your plan together as a group, and hold each other accountable for progress. Build a cross-functional budget based on your objectives. Collectively outline your goals and divide and conquer the strategies intertwined areas of responsibility based on roles and expertise. Answer to your successes and failures as a team.

We’ve always wanted to feel like we all had a stake in our business’ success. We’ve all wanted to believe that our job description wasn’t what mattered, but our potential for innovation, cooperation, creativity, and execution on things that mattered. That we were all invested in the process, and that we’d reap the benefits together by watching our business grow.

It’s here. For all of us to do, collectively. The walls between us – internally and externally – have never mattered less. Shouldn’t we, once and for all, grasp the opportunity to show how team-based innovation wins?

image by Jason Riedy

Social Media Time Management: 9 Guiding Principles

This is the last in our series on Social Media Time Management, but you’ll really find that these are less ideas about managing just social media and more ideas for managing online life in general. It’s a balancing act. And ultimately, you’re in the driver’s seat.

1) Manage Disruptions

The key to managing disruptions is to have daily priorities. Sounds simple, but isn’t. Pick three things that you have to get done today, and focus relentlessly on those. (Hint: they should always be tied into your bigger picture goals, or you’re wasting time). If that means you have to say “I’m blogging for an hour”, do that, and let nothing but emergencies stand in your way.

Realistically, unexpected stuff pops up. Document it, find a home for it so you can address it later, and give yourself permission to forget it until the time comes where it makes the priority list. If you have to address it now, take note of what you’re working on and come straight back to it when you’re done.

2) Control Information Overload

Stop trying to be everywhere. Just stop. In social media, information overload is yours to own and manage. Pick your two or three social sites and, unless your JOB is to spot the next big things, stick with them. Adopt new tools or strategies only when there is a compelling business reason to do so.

Subscribe only to the blogs you read, and unsub from the ones you don’t, without apology. Delete email you aren’t going to respond to (be honest), and never use your inbox as a to-do list (see #6). Turn your IM off when you’re trying to work. Lots of ideas getting in the way of execution? Create a parking lot for them so you can capture them and get them out of your mind. Visit this once a week, and see if any ideas on the paper warrant a move to reality.

3) Leverage Tools

Use a desktop tool like TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, CoTweet or HootSuite to streamline your Twitter use. Blog using a fluid tool like WordPress that has a suite of plugins to make your life easier, and use the scheduling function to write posts in advance. Make folders in Google Reader so you can prioritize your blog reviewing depending on how much time you have available.

However, resist the urge to automate your interactions. Automate and consolidate everything you can up to that point, but the engagement on social sites needs to be you, not a robot. THIS is where you need to spend the time.

4) Annotate and Share

If you don’t have one already, get a Delicious.com account and use it for your bookmarks. I say bookmark freely, even if you never get back to reading it. If you want to find something, it’s easier to go back to it. If you don’t, your links can be a valuable resource of information to others (and you can send them to your specific tags if you get repeated requests for the same information).

Use sites like Slideshare.net to share your presentations, and get ideas or frameworks for ones of your own. Try Flickr Creative Commons for sourcing images and sharing your own. Get to know and love the collaborative power of Google Docs or Zoho, so you don’t have to send stuff around in emails. Leverage your intranet or project tools like Basecamp to share information. The less time you spend looking for stuff, the more time you have to DO stuff.

5) Sometimes Templates are Okay

If you’re asked the same question several times a day in an email, write up a little framework of a response that you can personalize for each recipient, but that contains the bulk of the information you need to share. Same with Twitter. No, this doesn’t mean an autobot, this means having a set of standard links on hand or responses to common questions that you can respond to as needed without having to recreate it every time.

Build an FAQ page on your site to point people do. Create sharable documents that contain frequently requested information and have them on ready five in a folder for easy access. Build your tags in Delicious so that you can send people there for broad categories of related information, like statistics or case studies.

6) Wrangle Task Management

When you’re processing email or items in social media, every time a task pops up, you need a place to put it. I use Things for Mac, but there are lots of programs that will work, even the (gasp) task list in Outlook.

When you’re overwhelmed by what you’re supposed to do (say, the notes from a seminar you just attended or the volume of stuff in your inbox), process one thing at a time and ask yourself “What do I need to do with this as a next step?”. Whatever that task is, create an item for it on your task list and archive the rest of the information for later reference. Bonus step? Tag the items on your list that are doable in less than five minutes so you can take time each day (say, 35 to 45 minutes) to plow through a handful of those.

7) Communicate Expectations

Sometimes, you don’t have the answer. Sometimes, you don’t have the time to get to something right now, but you will at some point. Honesty and humility go a long way to helping manage expectations for responsiveness online. Try these:

• “I’d love to get that information to you, but I need 48 hours. Will that be okay, or do you need it sooner?”
• “I don’t have the answer to that, but I’d like to send your request to someone who does and have them respond. Is that okay?”
• “Hey there, I got your note but need a little time to respond. I’ll be back to you within the day.”
• To your boss, perhaps: “I’d like to complete this project, but here’s the information/resources I’m missing to get it done…”

This is another reason why it’s crucial to infuse some humanity into your conversations online, so folks know that you’re just a person over there, not a superhero or a robot. You need time to spend with your kid, feed the dog, spend with your spouse, read a book. Yes, you should still do those things. Being sure that folks know you’re responsive in a reasonable fashion but not going to be able to handle things ’round the clock is super important.

8 ) Establish Routines

If you have regular tasks and tactics to focus on, you’ll want to try and carve out time for them. Some examples:

• Blogging
• Reviewing and responding to email
• Listening and Monitoring (unless you have a dedicated staff person for this)
• Reporting and Analysis
• Checking in on social networks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Forums, Community sites

If you set aside specific hours in your day, turn off other distractions. (Yes, it’s okay to close your email program). Put your phone on Do Not Disturb or let it go to voicemail. Even 30 minutes of focused time on a single task, on a regular basis can ramp up your productivity. It is NOT “inauthentic” to set times to interact on your chosen social networks. It’s all a matter of balancing priorities.

9) Unplug.

Please. Get offline. Go outside. Take a bath. Play with your kid. Go to the movies. Or go to an in-person event or Tweetup. There is nothing that will derail your social media efforts more than never walking away from them.

You need perspective from an unplugged view so you priorities stay in focus. You need time to scribble your goals on paper, or just think. Productivity isn’t always about how many balls you’re juggling. Sometimes, it’s about very careful editing of how you do – or don’t – spend your time.

So, I’m sure you have tips and tricks for how you manage all of your social media efforts. Where do you draw the lines and say enough is enough? How do you prioritize, and are you allowing yourself to set realistic limitations and goals? I’d love your thoughts in the comments.

image by st_a_sh

Social Media Time Management: Selecting Tools

This post is the third in a multi-part series on Social Media Time Management, intended to supplement the content of the presentation I gave at BlogWorld Expo 2009. Click here to see the collection of posts in the series.

When you’ve planned and are ready to actually start engaging in social media, selecting the right tools can go a long way to helping you manage your time.

Remember, the tools you select should reflect what you’ve learned through your listening efforts, and help you accomplish the goals you’ve set.

When it comes to social networks or types of social media, select two or three. Don’t try to be everywhere or do it all. That’s an inevitable time sink, and you’ll do nothing well.

When it comes to the tools themselves, avoid shiny object syndrome and pick the ones that get you to your goals, and no more. Low tech is okay. Some suggestions for the varying areas of focus are below.

Listening and Monitoring

If you’re bootstrapping and on the DIY track, look into tools like Yahoo Pipes to build yourself a nice little aggregation environment. Or, try putting together a dashboard using NetVibes, and pull in the RSS feeds for your searches from sites like:

• Twitter Search
• Technorati
• Google Blog Search
• Backtype.com
• BoardTracker and BoardReader
• SocialMention.com
• YouTube
• BlogPulse

Or, if you really want to start with some basics, tap your search terms into a site like Addictomatic or IceRocket and get the pulse of what’s happening around you.

Disclosure: I work for Radian6, a social media monitoring company. I am, without question, biased in favor of our tool in terms of paid monitoring solutions. So if you have some budget for a listening solution, I’d recommend learning more about Radian6.

There’s a huge case to be made for investing in a monitoring tool. Once you’re spending more than a couple of hours in a day aggregating posts and information, and more than a couple of hours a week doing analysis on the data, it’s time to look at graduating to a solution that can help automate some of the work and free you up to actually discover the insights that can move your business forward.

Responding, Initiating and Creating

The number of social tools and sites available to you as a business are seemingly endless, right? The thing is, the only ones you need care about are the ones that are hosting conversations you want to be part of. That’s where the listening bit comes in. That’s how you know where to be. It’s never about what cool new toys and sites “they” are talking about. Dig?

I’ve covered a few of the most popular (and useful, in my book) social sites and tools in an ebook called the Social Media Starter Kit. It’s free, and it goes into detail about Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and LinkedIn and a few tidbits about some of the productivity and content creation tools that I’ve found useful. That should give you a start. (And by all means, if your industry is still chatting it up on forums and such, be there.)

Also, please don’t forget about “legacy” tools like email. Coupled with solid social media outreach and engagement, well crafted email newsletters and communications can be an essential part of what you’re doing, and help you cross pollinate your communities.

If you’re blogging, please do yourself the favor of using a platform like WordPress. The plugin resources and development community alone make it well worth the investment (you can get a snifty blog, built on WordPress, customized and prettied up for as little as a few hundred dollars. This beats the pants off of a lousy website). And get yourself a Google Reader account to stay connected with the blogs that matter most to you. Spending time commenting and contributing on other blogs is most likely an important piece of your engagement commitment.

Measuring

First things first. Have a spreadsheet program? Good. Calculator? Good. When it comes to measurement at a basic level, you really can get by with these things (though it’s going to take time, yes). The key is knowing WHAT to measure (which is a whole different post series, but for a start, here’s a presentation I did recently on social media measurement that might offer a few suggestions).

Deciding what to measure is super straightforward if you have clear goals in place. For instance, if your goal is to increase your overall awareness in social media across the next 12 months, you might track metrics like Share of Conversation, overall on-topic post volume (posts that are about you or mention you), and your specific share of posts in your selected social media types over that period (watching how your volume increases or decreases over time on, say Twitter, forum posts, and blogs.).

Benchmarking is crucial. You can’t track progress against something you aren’t measuring in the first place. If you want to increase customer loyalty, you need to know what indicators you’re tracking that point to that goal (repeat activity or purchases on an account, number of referrals from that source over a set period of time, increase in average purchase size, etc.).

For each objective, pick no more than three metrics to track. More than that, and you’re in the rabbit hole of measurement. The win isn’t that you measured. It’s that you measured something that provided an insight into your progress toward business goals. Choose wisely, and stay focused.

Some tools you might consider:

• Social media measurement and analytics: Radian6 (Again, I work for them, and I think it’s a superior paid solution)
• Twitter Analytics: HootSuite, Twitter Analyzer, TweetStats
• Web Analytics and Tracking: Hubspot, Google Analytics, Compete.com
• Blog Analytics: PostRank, Google Analytics (try the Social Media Metrics plugin, but it’s not perfect by any means)
• URL Shorteners like Bit.ly
• Facebook Ad analytics and Facebook Lexicon

When it comes to time management, selection of tools and resources is important, but it needs to be done with an editing eye and with a systematic approach. Random and haphazard tool selection leads to similar results. Do your homework, and the tools you need will often make themselves clear. Ignore the rest.

Next….

To close out the Social Media Time Management series, we’ll talk about some tips, tricks, and helpful hints to stay focused and on track when you’re navigating social media. Has this series been helpful to you? Please leave your feedback in the comments.