Newest marketing role needs to align with your company’s needs |
The fundamentals of good business still apply when creating new roles like ’social media expert’
by Scott Valentine
Photography by Michael Morrison
GURU AT LARGE: Social media needs to provide a return on investment, says executive Doug Lacombe
Sidebar: Training Options For In-house Social Media
Sidebar: And Now For Someone Completely Different
Click here to find our Twitter list of all the people featured in our suite of social media related stories in this month’s issue of Alberta Venture.
Even for those executives whose organizations live and breathe on the weird, wide web every day, it can be difficult to make sense of the muddled opportunities of social media. For example, what’s the benefit of marketing online if you don’t understand the potential return on investment (ROI)? Will tapping tools such as Twitter and Facebook drive your PR strategy to new heights, or does such uncontrollable exposure risk brand suicide? Not everybody who claims to be a ‘social media expert’ can be, can they?
What should human resources look for when your company goes to hire its own superstar? Do you pay big bucks for the old-school marketing guru with solid offline experience who seems barely capable of managing their email, or gamble your company reputation on a 20-year-old intern with zero business experience but who seems to live in online communities? What are the options and risks of provisioning a solution through an agency or outsourcing partner?
For many executives, the complexities involved with synthesizing social media as a tool of business ultimately leads them to ask a question of their own: ‘Is this even worth it?’
“The same thing was asked when the fax machine was introduced. And computers, and websites,” says Doug Lacombe, president of Calgary-based Communicatto.com and a verifiable elder statesman of Canadian social media (for starters, he put the first Canadian daily newspaper online). “The tendency is for companies to dive in without really understanding how social media fits broader business strategies, or how to measure ROI,” he says.
Lacombe, a seasoned executive with more than 20 years experience leading some of Canada’s most technically progressive media organizations, believes it’s important for C-level executives to clearly understand the potential benefits and pitfalls of social media as a tool in their organization, because, “. . . without a real connection to business, social media is just an expensive hobby.”
With that in mind, here’s a quick primer to familiarize yourself with the ins-and-outs of provisioning a competent, professional social media presence for your company.
Odds are, your business has a marketing plan that features some variation on the four Ps of marketing mix: product, price, place and promotion. The four Ps are an easy tool for helping your business approach marketing in a systematic and disciplined way.
The modern Internet equivalent of the four Ps is Forrester’s POST Method, which dictates that before engaging in any social strategy, we first need to understand the People we wish to interact with, the Objective of that interaction, our Strategy for advancing the relationship and the Technology we use to accomplish our goals.
“Notice that Technology comes last,” says Lacombe.
The message is clear: don’t get mystified by what’s easy to perceive as a litany of ever-changing technical tools and platforms associated with social media. The fundamentals of good business practice still apply.
“Be disciplined, keep it purpose-driven and focus on minimizing risk,” says Lacombe. “At the end of the day, for social media to be a meaningful part of your business, it has to make sense to write that cheque.”
Because adoption of social media by business is still quite new and its applications so varied, there is not yet much consensus on position descriptions, desirable candidate profiles and compensation levels. So, if you’re thinking of going the route of hiring social media talent into your organization, it’s best to start with a bit of research.
Take a look at the web’s largest social media job board at Mashable.com – there are dozens of different job titles, each with a unique position description blending elements of marketing, public relations, community management and a host of technical skills. Salaries range from entry-level to senior software engineer scale, and everything in-between. There are even specialist roles in HR, finance, graphic design and executive management that are geared to candidates with specific experience and skills in some aspect of social media.
“A lot of clients start by asking for help in defining what their social media roles are,” says Jennifer Aubin, founder and president of Calgary’s Techbent, a recruiting and HR company that specializes in helping early-stage tech companies grow their businesses. “It’s a bit like when people started hearing about Web 2.0,” she says. “Everybody’s heard the words ‘social media’ but nobody really gets what that means yet.”
For starts, clouding the question of what makes a good social media candidate is the fact that there is not a single accredited social media training program in existence. Yet, as Mashable’s 24-year-old CEO, Pete Cashmore, has famously pointed out, there are more than 15,000 self-professed ‘social media marketing experts’ on Twitter alone – nice gig, if you can talk your way into it.
In the absence of formal certifications to rely upon, Aubin suggests targeting candidates with education or experience in PR, journalism or marketing. “It’s really about finding the right combination of things to fit your role,” she says. “You want to find someone who lives in that social media culture but also has the practical skills and experience to benefit your business.”
“The candidate profile that we’re seeing have some success is someone in their late 20s to early 30s, someone who has been out of school for a few years, learned a space really well and made a decision that they really want to be involved with cutting-edge technology and business strategy,” says Aubin. “Strong writing skills are so key . . . often, people are coming from a communications field. Ryerson University seems to turn out a lot of good candidates.”
If hiring your own social media talent isn’t a priority, the option exists to rent talent and know-how from a traditional marketing or PR agency – just make sure you take the time to investigate your potential partner’s true social media acumen.
“Don’t fall for ‘I Twitter therefore I am’,” says Roger Kondrat, principal and founder of West17media.com and a sought-after speaker on the topic of social media business integration. “There’s a huge gap between someone who’s a power user of tools like Twitter and Facebook and someone who is an expert marketer or PR person.”
Kondrat, an entrepreneur-cum-marketer, agrees that looking for a formal background in business is essential to deriving optimal value from any social media consultant or agency: “You don’t want someone to post something juvenile in a community forum and screw up everything you’ve done to build your brand online.”
According to Kondrat, the disciplined business approach to social media strategy advocated by Lacombe and others, including a healthy dose of market research, analytics and ROI measurement – while patently un-cool with social media super users – is absolutely necessary. “Transfer the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can from your existing marketing practice and understand what new ones can be added to support your business goals,” he suggests.
Traditional KPIs that carry over quite well to social media performance measurement include: online sales figures, advertising investment returns and site referrals, all easily measureable using Google Analytics and other free services.
But you’ll also want to look at a range of ‘softer’ KPIs, including the number of interactions your various social media presences receive, the demographics of the people you interact with online (hint: it’s probably not the same as the people you deal with face-to-face), and the nature of those interactions: what people are saying, how they’re saying it and how others are responding.
A good agency should educate you on the mechanics of social media and get you thinking in terms of real KPIs early and often before ultimately handing the reins back over to the true expert on your business. You.
If the whole realm of social media seems off-the-mark from your organization’s core competencies, there are outsourcing options available, including everything from contract basement-entrepreneurs who will Twitter and post on your behalf, to offshore ‘rent-by-the-hour’ community manager solutions. But social media outsourcing (SMO) is a nascent industry with very few proven value propositions and even fewer ROI measurable.
Besides, there has to be a perfect solution that’s a little closer to home.
