How to Find Your Dream Job in Social Media

Recently, I participated in a panel discussion on social media with my industry peers. During the Q&A, one of the questions from an audience member was that social media seems to have left behind an entire generation of professionals and if there was any advice for folks who want to enter this field.

My response to folks, who are feeling left out of the social media space and/or are looking for that next opportunity, is that all's not lost and many of their current skills can be very valuable in this space.  As social media has evolved, it is becoming very apparent that it's more than just Facebooking and tweeting all day long (although many roles still have this as a requirement). Many of the emerging roles in social media require solid experience in one or more of these traditional areas such as community management, customer engagement, and marketing/PR communications.

While anyone can start a blog, it's not a novelty anymore and not everyone can have a hit blog as it's considerably more competitive than it was in the early days of blogging. All successful bloggers have to be good communicators. It doesn't matter if you have great subject matter expertise because if you can't translate that expertise into a lucid post that your customers understand, then you won't be effective as a blogger.

Also, placing someone with zero customer/community management experience in a customer-facing role on a social network is a huge risk. As social media evolves you need folks who can keep their calm on the social networking sites when faced with a hostile audience and that's where having solid community management or customer support experience is invaluable.

Other hot skill sets in this space are in search, analytics and operations. What's often forgotten in social media is the ability to work with large volumes of social content i.e. data. There is a critical need for professionals with strong analytical skills in the social media space to help businesses derive meaningful insights from their social media content and activities. In addition, with the increasing relevant of social content in search results, the strong SEO skills are more valuable than ever in this space.

Last but not the least, as social media adoption grows across companies, there is a growing demand for folks who understand how to scale the social media efforts across market segments and geographies. In addition, the ability to tie all the social media activities together and integrating into existing sales, support, CRM systems is also growing in demand.

That being said, social media career success not only requires a solid background but given the fast pace of evolution in this space, it's an absolute must to have an open mind and passion for constant learning. Hope you find this information useful as you embark on the search for your next big opportunity in the social media space.