It’s exciting to see that social media jobs are mainstream in companies of all sizes! The role has evolved into a number of specializations as many of us predicted it would. And companies are realizing the value and hiring people to solve the business problems that the social web has created. The evolution and adoption of a profession makes find a job much more competitive.

The secret to finding a job today in social media is really similar to any other profession. You need to understand what the company’s pain points are. And you need to be able to express the transferable skills that you have  that will help the business problems stated in the job description.

What is important:

• Experience – if you’re lacking in this area then try some of these:

Find a community in a vertical that you’re passionate about and volunteer there. Contact the admin and ask how you can help. Community Managers are always happy to accept help.

Search the web for internship opportunities. Many of these are remote opportunities.

Help a local business get started leveraging social media. (This may turn into a paid gig if you can show the value!)

• Writing skills

Blogging will be your best friend to hone your writing and story telling skills.

Reading other blogs is a great way to get ideas, tips and further your skill set

• Business knowledge and impact

This means the ability to show the value of your work in terms the business understands

For example, will you be responsible for building brand, lead gen, SEO or providing customer service on the web?

You need to know how to measure and show the impact of your efforts

Ideally, you will have proof points of this on your resume from your work experience

What is not important:

• Domain expertise

There was much debate over this a few years ago. Today’s job market requires a solid social skill set and the ability to be passionate about the subject matter.

The subject knowledge can be attained on the job.

• An amazing personal brand

It is important to have up to date profiles on LinkedIn and other social channels. (This is your profession and you should have demonstrable knowledge.)

Remember that the company is interested in having their business problems solved. If you have a great brand presence allow it to shine thru as expertise that you’ll provide.

What did I miss?

Have you went thru a job search recently or are seeking a social media role now?

What points would you like me to expand on?

My blogging recently has been in the form of guest posts. I will start republishing them here. This post was written for the Desk.com blog and was later published on the Salesforce.com blog.

You’ve already got the “secret” weapon for new customer acquisition — it’s called customer service. But your customer service team is now treading in what used to be marketing territory, because of the explosion of social media. Customer care is your new brand and marketing differentiator.

Social networks have radically changed the customer life cycle — customer care is now the beginning of that cycle and marketing used to own that. Companies using social networks for customer care can easily differentiate themselves from competitors who don’t.

Excellent customer care on the social web can drive new customer acquisition and lower your branding, marketing and advertising costs.

The funnel turns into a circle

In the traditional funnel, marketing’s role is to drive awareness and generate leads. Customer care is there in the middle, just after the selection and purchase has been made.

The social web has completely changed this paradigm. The customer life cycle is now better expressed as a continual circle. The social networks put customer care at the top of this loop. Providing customer service in social channels generates positive word-of-mouth and builds relationships with brand fans. Those fans, in turn, build product- and brand-awareness by sharing their excitement about products and services. Consumers entering or in the buying cycle will find the amazing solution to their problem through search engines. And if, after purchase, the product satisfies or exceeds their expectations,and they receive excellent customer support in the channel of their choice they will tell their friends.

The spiraling circle

This behavior will continue to spiral out across the social channels, independent of geography. It makes it possible for the smallest companies to have a successful web presence and skip the overhead of bricks-and-mortar altogether. If you’re a B2B, it frees up your sales department to work with the serious prospects because customers will convert themselves. Here’s a tip: whether you’re a  B2C or B2B, make it simple for your customers to educate themselves about your product and offerings and purchase without sales assistance.

In 2008, I was doing marketing and customer service at a tech startup. I created a webpage consisting of training videos and FAQs and I had a service-level agreement for customer support of two hours. We also had a Paypal button that allowed people to purchase a $500-per-month subscription. I was thrilled to have a conversion rate of one “blue bird” per week converting with no interaction with sales.

Consumers are in charge. They expect the best customer service and they want it in the channels they choose. Are you providing that? Are your competitors providing customer care in the social channels? Are you missing out on new customers that are learning about their products?

Every Community Manager knows how much effort it takes to grow a young Community and encourage engagement in an established one. Most Communities also include social outposts on channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and possibly LinkedIn depending where customers are at. Participating in and growing this multi-channel presence is more than a full time job. The irony is that we all know that Community building takes at least three to six months before one can start to realize business objectives. We are all in agreement that Community is not a campaign that can be accomplished in a quarter.

How many of you wish that you could have more headcount to grow your social presence? Have you recently mentioned you wish that you could clone yourself?

A couple of months ago I faced this exact dilemma. My community strategy included a long list of ideas, but I did not have the luxury of a dedicated team to get it all done.  This is the challenge that I was struggling with before the holidays. I launched the Social Business Community less than five months ago and I wanted to fast track my vision.

One day it dawned on me that I had the perfect test grounds for an experiment! And the solution became clear. The concept of advocacy programs in customer facing communities is not a new concept. One of my first projects at Dell was to implement the Rockstar program and re-engage the loyal brand advocates in the forums. But what if one created a similar program for staff members?

I am presently training in five Dell team members. They come from various business units and have their own reasons for wanting to volunteer in the @DellSocialBiz Community. Two are from HR, one is from Sales, another is business analyst and the fifth works in social media every day. It’s an exciting next step for the community, for the volunteers and for me to evolve a different framework for advocacy.

They will be using our enterprise tools to grow the social channels, contributing ideas to our editorial board, and assisting with community related tasks and helping organize virtual events. I am segmenting the responsibilities so that each has a focus (and doesn’t get overwhelmed).

You may ask, ‘Why would anyone want to add extra work to their day job?’ What’s in it for them?

I have offered that they will receive the following:

• mentorship to learn social best practices that will augment their career growth and future
• ability to grow their personal presence by representing Dell in the Community and on social channels
• an understanding of the behind the scenes for content marketing, content calendering, SEO best practices, reporting, inbound marketing, etc

I am excited to start this journey with them! Their energy is contagious and I appreciate their willingness to go the extra mile.

Many people are interested in learning to use social for their roles. Have you considered recruiting staff at your company to help with your Community and social channels? What challenges would you have in doing this at your company?

Photograph credit: Woo-Suk Hwang

An overview of the lifetime traffic around my blog made me realize how much my blogging has impacted my personal brand and the ROI around it. This quick exercise made me realize that I need to start blogging again on a regular basis and start investing again.

I love digging into numbers! And the steady number of visitors to my blog despite the lack of new posts reinforce the statements that I hear on an ongoing basis:

• some have said that it’s a Bible for Community Managers
• requests that I start blogging again
• it inspires people to join the profession

I started blogging in December 2006 on a niche blog. In early 2007, I realized that I needed to be blogging under my own brand and I launched this blog in September of that year. I posted articles many times a week consistently through 2009. Once the startup that I was working for was acquired in mid 2009 my blogging subsided. Part of that was because I was busy writing a series of 10 white papers on Social Media ROI.

It really surprised me that the traffic has continued at that rate and so I took a look at what’s been driving it. Interestingly enough, StumbleUpon drove the most traffic in 2007 and 2008 followed by Twitter. In 2009 it shifted to Twitter driving the most traffic. Over 25% of the traffic for 2010 – 2012 has been from the definition for Online Community Manager on Wikipedia.

The ROI of my blogging and the value of my personal brand is fairly easy to express even though I don’t have any direct revenue generating aspects on my blog such as affiliate links or ads.

Here is an overview:

• My salary has increased 178% since 2006 (the impact is over a quarter of million dollars income)
• Invitations to present and lead workshops at conferences at a global level
• Guest blogging opportunities

This review reminds me of the following five reasons of why it’s important to invest in yourself by blogging:

1. Professional growth – Recently I have been using LinkedIn to document my experience, but it’s time to return to sharing my insights and learnings from them.
2. Profession/career evolution – Online Community strategy is still a nascent role and companies are coming to realize the value of engagement and related KPI’s. (It’s so much more than the platform or social channel)
3. Therapy – Writing has always been helpful for me to express my ideas and I find it quite relaxing. I have also become much more proficient with diagramming my concepts and ideas.

My goal is to publish weekly. It will also be a good opportunity to review some of my most read content and update it.

Have you done a high level overview of your blogging efforts? What are your take aways?

It’s no small feat for a company to transition to become a social business. One would think that it’s easier for smaller organizations, but companies of all sizes face the following barriers.

1. Traditionalists are afraid of change. How many times have you heard, “What we’ve been doing has been working, so why change?” The biggest challenge is the concept of placing content in social channels where it’s shareable. The paradigm and the purpose of the corporate website and where content lives needs to be adjusted.

2. Governance stifles creativity. Trust is required to allow staff in a social business to experiment and be nimble. Stringent policies and procedures need to be flexible enough to provide guidance but not be too strict. Consider providing best practices and gain buy in across business units by providing support and gathering a collective group that meets on a regular basis and brainstorms new ideas.

3. Business functions aren’t always willing to share budgets. Cost centers can create silos when the company’s culture doesn’t encourage collaboration. Social isn’t black and white. There is quite a journey to get to the point where the insights and results from social media are being utilized by specific business functions. A company may start out with a marketing presence in the social channels, but quickly realize that customer service also needs to participate. And vice versa, customer support needs in the social channels may draw the organization into social, but information on product marketing needs to be routed appropriately.

4. Executives need to realize that it will take more than a quarter. Social media isn’t a campaign. The more engagement that is realized, the more community building that happens. That results in the optimum customer experience, but it will also require more time to measure the results. Executive sponsorship is imperative and the expectation need to be established that the effort is long-term.

5. Social efforts are managed externally by agencies. As businesses become more social, one of the priorities is to train staff and empower them to engage directly in social channels. The advantage is that business units will start to integrate roles that will take on responsibilities for content calendars, brand monitoring, finding insights and responding to them. I agree with this article that this will result in cost savings for a social business and will encourage faster evolution internally. Complete reliance on agencies makes it difficult to break down siloes and collaborate.

None of these are insurmountable. They do require a consistent strategy to ensure that none of them impede progress. What challenges or barriers do you see organizations have in becoming a social business?

Community Managers aren’t the best followers in many ways. You’ll usually find them leading culture shifts at companies encouraging others to join in their march. This post is inspired by the ebook below created by TopRank that highlights tips for Social Media which is a spin off from the list of 25 Women that Rock Social Media that they published last October (and graciously included me in it).

Here’s my riff on their theme:

I contend that Community Managers just aren’t a fit for karaoke! The expectation is to sing a song where the words are provided. This isn’t the case for those of us that work with online Communities. Effective community strategy professionals require creative people that aren’t satisfied with following a  machine. We need to not only move out of our comfort zone, but we try to facilitate that shift in others through patience and guidance. Some of us work with external communities and there is an extra layer of challenge in guiding customers, brand advocates and detractors. And some work to build community within an organization and facilitate collaboration and break down silos.

So singing the same old song really doesn’t work because Communities are quite unpredictable. We are required to rise up to the requests of our audience (the community). Every day brings new requests for us to sing (respond) to. An experienced Community Manager knows how to respond whether they know the words or not. We actually thrive on new requests that require ingenuity and group learning experiences. A skilled Community Manager will ask the Community to join in the song and have them help work out the lyrics by crowdsourcing them!

One of my key strategies in implementing the new Dell Rockstar advocacy program was to mentor the Community Manager on how to ask the advocates what they thought the solution was. My previous role as a library manager taught me the valuable lesson that as a leader you need to empower the team to be a part of the solution in order to gain buy in and support. In Community that team doesn’t always report directly to you and many times they aren’t even employees, so you all better be singing to the same song even if the words may be just slightly different! This has allowed me to step away but periodically peak in on the conversations. On one occasion I noticed and forwarded a thread of an unhappy song to the Community Manager and said, ‘There’s a tidal wave coming, you need to ask the Community how they think this should be handled!’. Dell’s support forums are primarily peer-to-peer, but this was an occasion when Dell team members needed to step in and work more closely with the Dell Rockstars in order to make future threads (songs) more harmonious.

A solid community strategy will have the Community dynamics fine tuned and ready for when the platform breaks down. And technology will always fail at the most inopportune times. If you liken the community platform to a karaoke machine then you’ll know what I mean. Even when the platform has major problems, the Community keeps on singing. If it’s an emergency then the din in the inbox becomes a bit high-pitched!

I’ll never forget my first experience with a platform failure. It was Sunday morning and I awoke to a frantic email from one of my moderators in Germany. Someone had hacked the platform and my unpaid volunteer talked to the hacker and fended off the crazy threats. Then I started calling my team trying to find someone to fix the problem. (The platform version hadn’t been updated for a year and there were security holes that were easy to breach. It was playing old outdated songs and someone had noticed!) And Monday the CFO called a meeting to review the risks that we had been exposed to. (That wasn’t happy music!)

The reason that I love Community and Social Media strategy is that innovation only happens when you don’t sing the same song as everyone else does. Success in this career requires a lot of tenacity to convince others to understand the vision and importance of the organic long-term success of building relationships. It doesn’t happen immediately. I would argue that if your role as a Community Manager feels like you’re doing a great job singing the same old songs to the Karaoke machine then you may not be trying as hard as you could be. I challenge you to shake it up a bit and try out some new lyrics on your audience! I bet your Community will love it, grow with you and give you a standing ovation!

This is one of my favorite quotes.

Dance as if no one is watching, Sing as if no one is listening and Live every day as if it were your last!

I will admit that sometimes I feel that the true secret to being successful in this profession is to be brave enough to dance and sing when people are watching! That’s when the magic of the role is experienced and change happens!

If you’re intrigued by making your own music, spend some time browsing TopRank Marketing’s blog and slideshare account. You’ll find plenty of great ideas!

We’re looking for the two best answers, then we’ll bring you to Dell World in December to pitch your idea in person! Are you up to the challenge?

Last year Dell World was amazing and this year it promises to be even better! This year we are integrating a social media neighborhood. My colleague, Cy Jervis decided to take IdeaStorm offline by using IdeaStorm to source ideas for how Dell can better use social to connect to its customers.

IdeaStorm

I have been working with Dell Communities for over a year and continually see opportunities for us to better connect with our customers. This spring I put together a project to expand the support forums across eight languages. Dell provides support in the social channels in 14 languages, so why not? Now we have a request for a ninth language. I love the enthusiasm of our teams around the world!

Last fall I worked with Dell’s most faithful advocates and implemented the Dell Rockstar Program. I’m excited that we’re bringing a number of them to Dell World! What a great way to thank them for their loyal support (some for as long as 10 years). I have been putting things in place to show the value of their contributions and making the program scalable (ie: setting up the program, program scorecard, training, mentorship, etc)

Then, last winter Cy Jervis was hired to take care of IdeaStorm full time. I say ‘full time’ because Cy had been faithfully volunteering at IdeaStorm for the full five years since it launched. I assure you that he has some great stories to tell!

And now you have the opportunity to tell Dell how you think we can better use social media and the social channels to better meet the needs of our customers. The two best answers will receive a trip to Dell World in December! In addition to presenting your idea, you’ll have the opportunity to get a close up view of Dell’s present social efforts and meet some great people. The food trucks and the December weather in Austin are also great reasons to visit!

Are you up to the challenge?! You can submit your idea here at the IdeaStorm Live Challenge Contest

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends 10/25/2012. For Official Rules visit http://del.ly/6010pBia

A career in social media requires a varied skill set, but that depth and breadth can also be quite detrimental if focus is lost. Success in social media requires a full range from being detail oriented to strategic.

Mentoring community managers has pointed out a pitfall that is frequently encountered. The good news is that it is easily avoidable. What is it you ask? The need to FOCUS.

Professionals in traditional roles have established expectations. Working in evolving roles such as  Community Manager or Social Media Strategist are nebulous at best. The following are generally givens:

• internal education is always needed to gain project sponsorship and budget
• innovation starts with a pilot where pilot means minimal resources for staffing and budget
• showing value and ROI takes longer due to the organic nature vs a campaign completed in a quarter
• everywhere one turns, there are things needing doing
• in most companies with progressive cultures that have embraced social media, roles blur and overlap

Those of us that have chosen this profession excel at multitasking, managing multiple projects and working cross-functionally. And we see opportunities to make an impact with social everywhere.

You may ask at this point, “Isn’t that that how it’s supposed to be and what one is supposed to be doing in these types of roles?”. My suggestion is to step back and take a look at it from management’s point of view. What do they see? They may or may not realize that all those things need to be done. If you’re working on  a whole bunch of things, is enough of the main project getting done? Could you pare back to one or two main projects? Would that increase your effectiveness?

It’s really important to stop and consider if choosing to be focused can help you to be more efficient and effective. If you’re wondering where you stand in this area, a suggestion is to ask a trusted colleague or mentor in your organization what their perception is. A pilot that is done well will gain much more traction and have potential for future expansion than many small projects that may leave you feeling overextended. A moment of reflection in this area could provide a simple boost to your career.

How do you focus on priorities and manage all of the projects that need doing?

When I say that it’s the third annual Community Manager Appreciation Day … they look at me like Really? REALLY?!!!

Yes, really! And the question is, who started that? My answer, Jeremiah Owyang did. (with a straight face). And I believe that we should have a day! It’s not a Hallmark recognized day yet, but organizations should appreciate these committed people who tirelessly work to make things better externally and internally. It’s not easy job!

So, I pondered what could I do for everyone? Last week I was in a meeting listening to Susan Beebe brief us on the Google+ Hangout that Dell streamed from CES. That got the wheels turning and I asked Susan to help me with the logistics.

So I put together some panels of amazing people to provide an educational, fun, networking event with no regard to geography.

Here’s the details & see you there!

Community Management 3.0 #CMAD

Monday, January 23 12 pm cst (10 am pst)

Do you have plans for Community Manager Appreciation Day?

     Come join our conversation on a Google+ Hangout and spend an hour

     with some of the most amazing Community thought leaders!

• Chief Company Pinata & Cat Herder

Beyond a Day in the Life of a Community Manager

     Panelists:

            Amy Muller Chief Community Officer & Co-Founder, Get Satisfaction

            Mark Harrison Community Manager Google Earth & SketchUp

            Patrick O’Keefe Author of Managing Online Forums, iFroggy Networks

• No Matter B2B or B2C; It’s P2P!

Whether Business to Business or to Customer; it’s always People to People

     Panelists

            Jim Storer Principal/Founder at The Community Roundtable

            Vanessa DiMauro CEO Leader Networks

            Lionel Menchaca Chief Blogger, Dell

• Evolving a Social Business

The Future of the Community Manager Role

      Panelists:

            Jeremiah Owyang Industry Analyst & Partner, Altimeter Group

            Bill Johnston Director of Global Online Community

     Circle Leader: Connie Bensen, Sr Mgr Community Strategy, Dell

Want to join us?

Put this in your calendar:

1. Community 3.0 Google+ Hangout ~ Jan 23, 12 pm cst
2. Send questions for the panelists to @cbensen on Twitter or Google+
3. New to Hangouts? Check out Getting started with Hangouts
4. For the event, go to Dell’s Google+ page +Dell
5. Chat will be available in the sidebar. #CMAD12 on Twitter

Can’t make it? The Hangout will be recorded and available for playback later.

**A huge thanks to Susan Beebe, Dell’s Google+ Guru!

Here’s the event info on Facebook (Join the Community Manager Facebook group)

What questions do you have for the panels?

It’s been exciting to see the evolution of the Community Manager role and how it is becoming mainstream across organizations ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 50 and with no matter as to profit or non-profit.

People have been avidly interested in pursuing this type of role and want to know how they can gain the necessary skills. Back in June of 2008 I offered 2 training programs to meet that need. It went great until I got sucked into the tech startup world and social media monitoring. Since then I have continued to mentor and scale the reach here through my blog.

Periodically people would request my courses when they came across the old posts referencing training. I always felt bad when I had to explain that my day job was busier than busy. So, I’m really pleased to see that WOMMA and the The Community Roundtable are offering training courses that are specific to Community Management (in contrast to Social Media in general) and they are created by credible people in the industry. Earlier this week Jeremiah Owyang covered the pro’s and con’s of the certification aspect of the Community Manager Training courses.

These courses will:

• fast track your knowledge base on the expectations of community management
• open your eyes to aspects that you didn’t realize existed and cause you to have even more questions
• be excellent for those of you that have been assigned or are spending a portion of your time in this new role

They probably won’t:

• make it easier to get a job (employers are getting 100’s of app’s per position) or more pay
• ramp a company’s adoption of social media (ie: embrace the value of community & related culture shift)
• replace the value of volunteering and showing leadership in an online community and the related experience.

If you’re interested in exploring community management and strategy these courses are a good place to gain the skills and an overview.

I would highly recommend connecting with like-minded people in one of the following communities:

• Facebook group Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelist

An active group that has new people joining everyday. There is a doc with social media jobs there.

• Community BackChannel

Membership is free, but there is a process for requesting it.

• CommunityAdmins.com

These active forums are a part of Patrick O’Keefe’s iFroggy network. Patrick is the author of Managing Online Forums.

• Community RoundTable

Jim Storer & Rachel Happe are the founders of this peer network. They have built a very active community that is based on resources, research and regular activities.

Seeking a job? Check out this Facebook group of Social Media Jobs

If you’re a practicing Community Manager, what resources have you found the most helpful?