Connie Bensen

Your dream is to work in social media. You’ve been blogging, building your brand and know your stuff. After doing all the right things you have a job offer, so now what?

As with any potential new job there are many questions & many unknowns in regard to one in social media. And to make it worse, I believe that there are many more because the space is so new.

I have been advising both employers and job seekers for quite awhile. Here’s a review of practical things to consider when you’re on that emotional high of having received a job offer:

1. job expectations? Do you know what your role will be? Has it been defined adequately? Be wary of a job that is too open-ended. Overall, make sure that the expectations are communicated from both sides.

2. a good fit? What is the culture of the company? How open are they to change? Social media requires a culture that has open communication and a focus on the customers.

3. salary? Only you know what you need, but don’t undersell yourself. I hear of too many companies expecting a lot of services for little or nothing. On the flip side I think that some investment at the beginning on your part can prove to be very fruitful. As with anything one must gain experience. This is an opportunity to show you skills. You can influence this by requesting that your status be reviewed in a shorter period of time than the usual year (which is really too long in the online world because things are changing so quickly).

4. how will you measure your efforts? This is imperative to plan for. You need to benchmark where the brand is at then you’ll be able to compare your efforts against that going forward. This will have a direct impact on salary. If you can prove that you’re efforts are having a measurable impact then you’ll be that much further ahead.

5. contract or salary? This really depends on many things. Contract work allows much more flexibility. I think that a more important question is what are your job requirements based on? hours or deliverables? My recommendation is that deliverables is much more flexible and suited to the role.

6. work remotely? More and more people are working remotely, but I don’t think that employers are trending toward this yet. I’ve worked online remotely since 2006. And before that I worked for a decade remotely because my Director was 75 miles away. I also supervised 7 library sites spanning 80 miles and it was no problem. We had phones, email, and transportation. Now I have IM, airports and my blackberry. It’s all the same and I believe that I’m more effective working from where I live.

7. should you relocate? This is also related to salary. What is the cost of living in the new location? Can you mediate the risks involved? Many people that ask me are considering going to work for startups. I loved working with startups so don’t get me wrong, but there are some inherent risks along with the excitement.

I hope that those provide you with some questions to ponder as you seek your ideal job. What did I miss?

It’s a busy time of year! Next week I’ll be in San Francisco for two events. I’m doing a 3 hour workshop at Enterprise 2.0 on Frameworks for utilizing social media. The diagram in my last blog post outlines the potential that a community manager offers an organization.

I will share how to use social media to:

This diagram summarizes what I have learned over the past year about how my role as a Community Manager influences the sales funnel. We are in agreement that social media efforts need to be measured. I will contend that the role of community manager or social media specialist requires you to show how you contribute to your organization’s business objectives in order to justify your presence (and paycheck).

I created the diagram to help us as practitioners describe our position and influence in the sales funnel. The concepts apply to B2B sales as much as to B2C. Too often I think that Community Managers are viewed as caretakers of forums and having the voice of the company. I will argue that it is so much more.

The Community Manager influences the sales funnel in a three dimensional way. We are everywhere: before consumers enter the sales funnel, assisting them as they move through it, holding their hand as they convert, and providing ongoing service after the purchase.

Building Brand Awareness before consumers enter the sales funnel:

This is where everyone sees Community Managers interacting with everyone. They make social media marketing look easy while they build brand & positive PR. They truly are the voice of the company as they deal with the positive as well as the negative. And they’re at events making things happen!

Assisting with the Conversion as people move toward the purchase decision:

A Community Manager is the industry expert. They have in-depth knowledge of the products and their application. And most importantly they’re very connected with the customers. Community Managers can be the Salesperson’s best friend when they need some extra assistance for the challenging questions. A Community Manager can also help with customer support issues both before and after the sale. This builds trust and confidence about the product/brand. If people know they’ll get good service they’re much more likely to purchase.

CrossSelling and UpSelling:

Our culture requires that we provide excellent customer service after the sale. So that’s considered to be assumed. The cone gets larger for a specific reason. Community Manager’s have many opportunities to educate customers about new features, additional products and provide resources. Many customers appreciate hearing about additional products or higher levels of service. It’s easy to work hand in hand with sales to provide for customer’s needs.

Product Improvements:

The opportunity to influence product development is a very important aspect of the Community Manager’s role. Working directly with the customers and sales provides much feedback as to what’s working, what’s not & ideas for improvement. As a Community Manager interacts with thought leaders and others involved in the industry they are well prepared to advise the executive level. And the final area is staff training & HR. A Community Manager needs a team. HR has the ability to empower the organization so that they can interact with customers. This will require staff training and the Community Manager to lead that & be the go-to person.

This is not to say that we need to forget social media best practices and push our message. I believe that Community Managers need to work in synch with Sales and provide assistance as needed. My experience has been that we had so much to teach each other. Once we hit our stride and realized how the two roles complemented each other we were able to run with it.

What are your thoughts? Does this help justify a Community Manager/Social Media Specialist in your business?

If you’re interested in reading more:

Responsibilities & Goals of the Community Manager Role

How We Grew Our Startup 840% in a Year

Michael Leander Nielson of Oslo  invited me to present a webinar on Business Objectives for Social Media Monitoring. It’s a popular topic and we had great attendance!

I covered the following:

• Which objectives to consider when defining your social media monitoring (SMM) strategy
• What types of tools are available
• How to make sense of the data that is gathered
• The ROI and benefits of social media monitoring

During the webinar it was interesting the exchange of Twitter usernames transition to  requesting to continue the conversation in a community. It underlined how people with a similar affinity will want to gather! Everyone is welcome to join our Community .

One of the challenges that I have in presenting webinars is that I feel like I’m talking to an empty space. But that wasn’t the case in this one. There was a lot of conversation happening in the chat box. I had 5 poll questions and that generated more conversation on the side as well making much more interactive. Here are the results:

Many of those that chose ‘Other’ posted their background in the chat.

I found this to be very interesting that the majority were B2B’s!

This explains why we’re so busy. Social Media monitoring isn’t mainstream yet. People are still learning.

Attendees were primarily from Europe, and there were a lot of questions about language capabilities.

It’s really important to know what your objective is for listening.

I will post a link to the recording of the webinar when it is available.