Industry Challenges and Career Opportunities in Social Media

One of the motivating factors for me in doing this course was to get a handle on social media marketing strategies. Industry research[i] in late 2010 documented the degree to which organizations (236 small, medium and large sized) were integrating social media into marketing strategy. This research suggests they are not planning for it, the five main findings I found interesting were:

1.       79% believe social media is a NOT  a fad and here to stay

2.       9% had formally planned and implemented social media

3.       60% did not have a social media policy

4.       64% of respondents reported that they currently allocate less than 5% of their marketing budget to social media

5.       Human resources for implementing social media has been absorbed into existing roles    

Industry is struggling to deal with this new media and clearly require more knowledge and expertise to develop a measurable social media campaign that aligns with traditional media and more importantly organizational goals. There is a need for more credible research in social media, more staff training, more allocation from budgets and organizational cultural change.

A suggested starting point might be for organizations to incrementally allocate resources, start with test pilots and see the results. The common trend I have found in reading articles on social media is that like traditional communications, campaigns must reach as many consumers as possible to remind them and nudge them towards purchasing decisions. To effectively achieve this organizations could focus only on the five big platforms Facebook, Blogs (WordPress), LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.  I find it easier to focus on these five and often get distracted by a new technology or platform but the same strategic tools I feel should still apply.

These are big organizational challenges and I found the statistics above encouraging from a course and career point of view. I do think organizations should resist the temptation to select the young techy employee who is passionate about social media as the lead champion. The candidate I feel should understand the organizational goals and fundamentals of brand development and start to plan, develop and embed social media into the overall marketing plan. Creating job titles and building this into job descriptions would be a welcomed trend.

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[i] Nelson, F and Klose G (2010), The Social Media Leap: Integrating social media into marketing strategy, ESOMAR,