Career Headquarters 101
Creating a significant online presence has never been easier for small business owners who are savvy enough to capitalize on the benefits of social media in their marketing plans.
In the past, a more detailed knowledge of technology was often required to establish an active online presence, but today’s business owners are finding that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are simple to implement and require very little technical skill to maintain.
Despite their ease of use and popularity, the benefits of social media are truly reaped by those who have a distinct strategy built upon creating a passionate and vibrant online communitybased on active engagement.
Customer Engagement
Customers who are social media users utilize social media platforms because they are looking to become immersed in dynamic online communities centered on shared experiences and similar interests.
Businesses can optimize their visibility on a local or global level by showcasing the products and services they offer as points of common interest between social media users.
Unfortunately, many novice business owners in the world of social media do not adequately research the concept of active engagement, and they often mistakenly assume that social media communication is a one way conversation.
The good news is that online engagement is quite easy to initiate. Asking and answering questions that are related to the industry or directly addressing a specific customer’s experience builds trust.
Furthermore, communicating in a timely and relevant manner shows willingness on the part of a business owner to participate in the creation of a community.
Small business also have the opportunity to foster a passion for their products and services within social media communities. A properly managed community page, for example, can create a platform where customers not only engage with the owner, but where they can engage with each other.
This level of engagement exemplifies one of the greatest benefits of social media since it creates a marketing plan in which customers take the initiative to educate each other and promote products.
Understanding the Customer
In the best case scenario, a well managed social media plan can take on a life of its own and leave wise business owners in the enviable position of letting their customers do their advertising work for them.
Ultimately, the success of a social media marketing plan rests upon a business owner’s ability to leverage the desires of their customers to connect online as well as provide a forum for them to communicate their personal experiences of the product offered.
The benefits of a well executed social media plan are certainly not limited to communication, engagement and fostering passion within a customer base, but these benefits certainly lay the groundwork for others that may follow.
What other benefits do you see from social media initiatives, specifically for small businesses?
Internships for positions in social media are becoming extremely popular as companies look for ways to bring talent on-board and add social media practices into their marketing mix.
Because internships are less expensive than full-time employees, more companies are opting for internships for social media jobs.
Social media internships are a great way for prospective employees to try out social media marketing as a career while giving employers an opportunity to determine if a social media strategy is the right choice for the company.
Social Media Internship Salaries
Recent data from Simply Hired places salaries for social media internships at about $39,000 per year. That’s about $12,000 less than the average salary in social media and over $8,000 more than the average American makes in a year.
Of course you have to consider salary variations due to location, experience, and other factors. However considering that the average salary is in the neighborhood of $40,000, it’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss.
Social Media Internship Trends
As far as growth trends in social media internships is concerned, this job title has seen a growth of 283% since 2009. Consider that we’ve been in a recession for a greater part of the past two years, that growth is phenomenal.
Social media is where you want to be if you are looking to expand your marketing career or if you are just getting started with internet marketing.
More and more companies are building Facebook pages, getting on Twitter and interacting with customers in ways never thought possible.
Make sure to check out our job postings for a full listing of social media internship opportunities in your area.
Whether it’s an independent contractor or a social media manager from a company, social media marketing is not as easy as some people might think it is, especially when compared to other job types in online marketing.
However, social media sites serve as one of the best places to conduct business of marketing and will yield most favorable outcomes for the business or website owner when done right.
To be able to conduct a correct social media marketing campaigns, one must first have the following social media skills.
What exactly do you need to succeed in Social Media?
A lot of people often think of social media marketing as similar to juggling with multitasking in different areas of a large scale in terms of the accounts.
Perhaps the most important out of all skills for a social media manager is his or her being sociable. It says it right there on the job description. It might sound like an easy task but trying to make an impact out of the others who are connected through the professional in social media sites is very difficult.
Sharing is Important
What makes good social media marketers competent is their willingness to let people in their lives or simply sharing about details that they know will encourage people to come back or traffic to be drawn in.
Social media sites also serve a purpose—for entertainment and information. The marketer may be able to use it by offering lures of the freshest news and updates on current events or the most interesting entertainment headlines. If the owner of the account is into a particular niche, then it should be centered on sharing facts about that to show competency.
Organization Skills
The second characteristic of a social media marketer is organization skills. Out of all the social media skills, this will be the weapon of choice to be able to handle the large scale operations he or she will work upon. Some people do not know it but experts use not only one or two account per site but multiples of up to 10 per website or contract. This is to increase the chances of being noticed and spread the word about the online business faster than with only one account.
However, if things are not in order, these multiple accounts will be worthless and useless. When conducting social media marketing, sticking to schedules is not as easy as compared to other tasks.
Why? It is simply because changes are called in every now and then or connections through sites. Revisions should be done quickly because those who are following the account might get the wrong idea for inaccuracy or wrong facts presented.
A social media marketer has the wide range of tasks involving comments and email response, research, monitoring activities and effective communication and reporting to clients.
Patience & Determination
The final necessity out of all the social media skills that must be possessed is patience and determination. The reason behind this is because of the nature of social media marketing taking quite a lot of time, effort and basically every resource required in order to turn into a lucrative investment.
It also takes a good deal of patience to work and conform to the dynamic quality of this field which constantly requires changes or revisions in order to stand out from others doing similar campaigns.
It might come as a surprise that no technical skills are included in the top skills required to become a social media marketer.
The truth is, these three qualities are what separate a successful, reliable and competent social media manager from the rest of the others who do it only for money or personal motives.
Social media marketing is both an art in that it is able to express the characteristics or personality of the one handling it as well as a science that requires certain set of skills to overcome.
Social media has become a social force. It is something that both individuals and businesses are using increasingly to network and do both personal and professional business in various ways.
This article will briefly explore this interesting new niche in internet interactivity and commerce.
Basics of Social Media
To answer the question “what is social media” in a basic sense: social media, as it’s used in the web sense, basically refers to websites that allow individuals to interact in a sociable manner and that is based around personalities rather than businesses or websites as such.
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (the three social media giants) allow individuals or groups to create pages that showcase who they are in a number of attention-getting and interactive ways.
For instance, an individual can put content of a verbal sort, visual elements such as photos or graphical icons, and video on a page to showcase their talents, interests, and general personality. This allows other users to find a page based on the user and to communicate with the user.
Social Media for Persona or Business Use
A slightly more subtle way of answering the what is social media question is to discriminate between social media that is used for business or personal use. Both, as noted above, are a common internet phenomenon.
Personal Use
Personal use of social media networks usually involves simple use of these sites for socialization. Individuals like to keep in contact with other users, look at items of interest that users post, send messages, upload videos and discuss them, and so on.
The primary motivation is here is social rather than monetary. These sites allow users to both communicate with existing friends, relatives, romantic contacts, or professional associates and to make new ones.
Business Use
Business use of social media, by contrast, is profit driven and monetarily motivated. Businesses use social media as a form of advertising. They create pages related to their business, using the interactive and multimedia nature of the sites to drive traffic to a website or landing page.
The simple advantage her for businesses is that social media sites are well trafficked and considered fun by users, so they are likely to check out what businesses have to offer on their social media pages.
Another advantage for businesses involves the fact that social media offers demographic tools and ways to pin point various classes of users. This enables businesses to reach customers that are most likely to be interested in their services.
Search features and diagnostics included with the site and even satellite sites allows companies to get fairly targeted about users they wish to contact or market to. A business can, for instance, send a message about a contest they are running on a social media page to a large group of users in a specific age group.
Jobs in Social Media
Social media jobs are a new employment niche. They may be done remotely as outsourced work or done in house at a specific business. They usually involve managing the social media presence of a company and overseeing its marketing performance.
These sites need to be continually updated in order to maintain user interest and to be checked regularly on how much traffic they are generating. This has enough work associate with it that it is often either a part time or full time job.
These new media jobs often have a lot involved with them. A social media professional may be asked to make video, analyze market trends that relate to social media, put up high quality photographic images, communicate with a large number of users who have interacted with the social media page, and many other tasks.
Social media sites are a daily phenomenon and need to be handled by one or several individuals as such. These new media jobs can be thought of as comparable to working at a television station and handling as specific aspect of broadcasting.
The Right Approach to Social Media for Business Purposes
By all accounts, the thing for a business to emphasize in social media is the entertainment value of the social media site. The people they frequent these sites consider them primarily entertainment and commercial resources second.
This if a business want to attract site subscribers or followers on a social media site they would do well to emphasize the entertainment/interaction aspects of the social media experience.
For instance, a business may run contests or put up entertaining videos that relate to what their business does. Users may initially be attracted to the game like feel of the contests or the fun of watching a funny or interesting video.
Once they show interest via this entertainment avenue, they are more likely to take interest in the business at a commercial level as a provider of goods or services.
Social media is an interesting phenomenon because it brings together social, commercial, and entertainment elements all in one place, offering advantages to socializers, shoppers, and businesses alike.
So what’s your definition of social media?
Careers in social media have seen a growth of over 200% in the past couple of years as companies like Facebook and Twitter reach more users and companies realize the value of interacting with customers on these channels.
Social Media Job Salaries
According to Simply Hired, the average U.S. salary for jobs in social media average $55,000. That’s roughly $20,000 more than the annual salary of an average American in 2010. That’s a great deal considering that a lot of positions in the social media space don’t require a degree.
What does this mean for you as a job seeker? There’s a lot of money to be made in this space. What about demand for jobs in social media? Demand for social media jobs is growing, see below.
Social Media Job Trends
The graph below represents the percentage of jobs with social media anywhere in the job listing. As you can see from the graph there has been an increased emphasis on social media for job listings in the marketplace.
From September 2009 to March 2011, job listings with the keywords social media have increased dramatically from .01% to about 1% of all job listings. The demand has grown dramatically in just 18 months. Imagine what it will be like by the end of this year.
Data provided by SimplyHired.com, a search engine for jobs.
