Wanted: Social Media Guru. Must know Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube inside and out; dazzle us with your community building experience; must be a quant jock, and be able to end a crisis in 140 characters (or less).
“A red flag goes up for me when someone says they’re a ‘social media guru,’” muses Bob Pearson, chief technology and media officer at WeissComm Group. “It’s a concern, because just blogging or tweeting a lot does not make someone successful in social media.”
As digital PR/social media become more prevalent within communications—and more integrated with other PR strategies and tactics—what are agencies and businesses looking for in candidates for a high-level social media position? How are these positions evolving as organizations become more familiar with digital platforms? In aiming to find out, PR News found multiple approaches and philosophies to hiring a social media expert.
DIFFERENT STROKES
Pearson and WeissComm take the tack of looking for candidates with well-rounded communications experience—and more.
“It helps if candidates have worked in customer care, tech support, marketing and sales—functions besides PR,” says Pearson. “The best people will have good business and customer sensibilities.”
In addition, Pearson has another requirement: a reasonable faculty for math. “They have to be able to look at data and interpret it,” he says. “People tend to put create intense slide decks with graphs that don’t really mean anything. You need to be able to compare different data sets.” This skill, says Pearson, is particularly important within an agency, where the digital team regularly presents results to clients.
Jon Bellinger, VP of social media strategy at Ketchum’s New York City office, concurs with Pearson on the guru idea. “It’s easy to find someone who claims to be a social media expert,” says Bellinger. “The trouble is in separating the good experts from the bad experts.
“Too often I talk to people who are ‘Twitter experts’ or experts at ‘Facebook strategy,’” continues Bellinger. “But when it comes down to it, most of those people are terrible at producing good ideas that Web users want to engage with.”
Again, speaking from the agency side, Bellinger believes many agencies don’t know quite what they are looking for when it comes to a social media person. “But I know it when I see it,” he says.
WEB CULTURE CLUB
To Bellinger, the best candidate is someone who understands Internet culture, “and how ideas are spread,” he says. “Many people know how to post and monitor Facebook and Twitter, but I rarely see candidates who inherently understand how Web communities work, and can make a gut assessment on good social media strategy versus bad strategy.”
Here’s where Bellinger’s philosophy differs from Pearson’s. Bellinger doesn’t necessarily look for candidates who are well-rounded with formal communications experience. “You can teach anyone to write a press release,” he says. “We’re looking for is someone who can put together a comprehensive Web strategy.” That experience, continues Bellinger, can come from being a part of an organic Web community—such as a community of moms.
Bellinger adds, “You can be most active member in the forum for your favorite band, and that tells me that you might be more qualified than a lot of people.”
As for measurement skills, Bellinger says people can be trained for that, and at WeissComm, a research team takes care of the heavy measurement lifting. “The one thing we don’t see consistently with candidates is the ability to look at a program and assess success from an engagement standpoint,” he says. “If you understand the difference between getting people excited on the Web or not, that’s what we look for.”
This kind of nontraditional philosophy allows Bellinger to look for talent in nontraditional settings. For example, he recently attended ROFLCon, an Internet culture conference held in Cambridge, Mass. There he met several people who had the right stuff. “I like bringing in industry outsiders—people with fresh perspectives and who may have connections with other people who are doing innovative things on the Internet,” says Bellinger. “We could possibly use that knowledge ourselves someday.”
In staffing his digital team, Pearson prefers to have a mix of experience, from former customer outreach specialists from Dell, people who have run community forums, and even someone who is a supply chain expert. “It’s good to understand how everything ties together in an organization,” says Pearson. “It’s blending the communications part of the job with knowing the business.”
HIGH STANDARDS
Brandy King, PR manager at Southwest Airlines, is familiar with social media innovation, since Southwest has long led the charge in corporate social media outreach. Southwest, says King, recently closed a search for a social media coordinator. Here’s what King is looking for from job candidates:
• Well-versed in social media, especially as a frequent participant.
• Familiar with current social media tools, and knowledge of technologies about to be introduced.
• Must think outside the social media box, with fresh ideas on how to reach the public via social media platforms.
• Experience with both traditional PR and social media measurement.
• An outgoing personality with a dash of humor, which mirrors the Southwest customer service image.
King adds that the job was posted on Southwest’s Twitter page (with over a million followers), and while the number of responses hadn’t been tallied, “we had to pull that post and take a break,” she says.
While the demand for this jobs remains steady, as organizations get more comfortable with social media, Pearson envisions a wide blend of PR skills that will make the specialist role extinct. “The future hires will be hybrids,” he says. “We’ll have full integration of skills; everyone will know social media, but will be equally familiar with other communications functions.” PRN
CONTACT:
Bob Pearson, [email protected]; Jon Bellinger, [email protected]; Brandy King, [email protected]; Jim Wills, [email protected].