Connie Bensen

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?