I was taking a quick look at Twitter and this tweet from Guy Kawasaki popped up. It was an infographic about social media jobs.
“Well, what the heck,” I thought. I went ahead and clicked. This is what I found:
© 2012 Onward Search
I really just have one question, but I’m quite desperate to know the answer.
When did job titles like “SEO Analayst” and “PR” become “Social Media Jobs?”
Your feedback is much appreciated.
When unemployment is up – “Social Media Job Titles” are too ? 🙂
@CateTV oh you cynic you 🙂
I think we’re starting to see the term social media start to include more and more fields. Some companies see social media and digital as one in the same now.
@mikestenger Yeah, I guess that makes sense, but saying these are “social media jobs” indicates that maybe they only started to exist when social media did. That makes me feel kind of itchy, ya know?
When social media was deemed the responsibility of marketing departments and flooded by marketeers.
@NicWirtz Always the marketers’ fault, huh? 😉
I am not sure that people know what some of these titles mean or what they are supposed to do.
@TheJackB I would say you are probably right!
Actually, in larger social media teams, there are places for a pretty diverse set of roles, most particularly SEO and analyst (2 separate roles). In some community management teams I’ve spoken with, there might be a main community manager, and then secondary subordinate roles where the team members can’t actually do posting. Mind you, I’m talking about larger teams here. When a brand has several hundreds of thousands of fans or followers, and a very diverse community, or even teams of employees distributed globally, it can get fairly complex.
…Now, for the discussion of whether marketing should be in charge of social – thats another ball of wax. I agree with people like Michael Brito and David Armano that social should pervade an organization. But not all organizations are prepared for that ,and really, social media is a game-changing phenomenon that isn’t even 4 years old. If you really consider what “marketing” is, in its broader sense, it seems like a natural place to manage social. If you only think of marketing in the narrowest sense – that it is a supporting function of advertising, then it would be unfortunate for marketing to run social.
@RicDragon Excellent points across the board, Mr. Superstar author, sir 🙂
I guess my main concern, as I said below, is that the infographic here defines some titles that existed well before social media as “social media jobs” and I’m not sure that’s a great message to send. SEO can exist well beyond the realm of social media, as can PR. In fact, even marketing can exist separate from the online world, although some might argue only at that company’s peril. It just sort of took me off guard, I guess 🙂
Lol…that’s why I simply call myself a writer rather than a blogger!
As social media evolves into social business, I think we’ll see all of these titles evolve with it. In five years social media will be more of an integrated medium. The social media marketing department will once again become the marketing department.
Unfortunately, it’s probably going to get more confusing before it gets clear.
There is an infographic for SEO that is so similar to this infographic with the same classifications of SEO jobs. It just looks like a cheap copy & paste job to me!
🙂
Marieke