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?

Community Managers aren’t the best followers in many ways. You’ll usually find them leading culture shifts at companies encouraging others to join in their march. This post is inspired by the ebook below created by TopRank that highlights tips for Social Media which is a spin off from the list of 25 Women that Rock Social Media that they published last October (and graciously included me in it).

Here’s my riff on their theme:

I contend that Community Managers just aren’t a fit for karaoke! The expectation is to sing a song where the words are provided. This isn’t the case for those of us that work with online Communities. Effective community strategy professionals require creative people that aren’t satisfied with following a  machine. We need to not only move out of our comfort zone, but we try to facilitate that shift in others through patience and guidance. Some of us work with external communities and there is an extra layer of challenge in guiding customers, brand advocates and detractors. And some work to build community within an organization and facilitate collaboration and break down silos.

So singing the same old song really doesn’t work because Communities are quite unpredictable. We are required to rise up to the requests of our audience (the community). Every day brings new requests for us to sing (respond) to. An experienced Community Manager knows how to respond whether they know the words or not. We actually thrive on new requests that require ingenuity and group learning experiences. A skilled Community Manager will ask the Community to join in the song and have them help work out the lyrics by crowdsourcing them!

One of my key strategies in implementing the new Dell Rockstar advocacy program was to mentor the Community Manager on how to ask the advocates what they thought the solution was. My previous role as a library manager taught me the valuable lesson that as a leader you need to empower the team to be a part of the solution in order to gain buy in and support. In Community that team doesn’t always report directly to you and many times they aren’t even employees, so you all better be singing to the same song even if the words may be just slightly different! This has allowed me to step away but periodically peak in on the conversations. On one occasion I noticed and forwarded a thread of an unhappy song to the Community Manager and said, ‘There’s a tidal wave coming, you need to ask the Community how they think this should be handled!’. Dell’s support forums are primarily peer-to-peer, but this was an occasion when Dell team members needed to step in and work more closely with the Dell Rockstars in order to make future threads (songs) more harmonious.

A solid community strategy will have the Community dynamics fine tuned and ready for when the platform breaks down. And technology will always fail at the most inopportune times. If you liken the community platform to a karaoke machine then you’ll know what I mean. Even when the platform has major problems, the Community keeps on singing. If it’s an emergency then the din in the inbox becomes a bit high-pitched!

I’ll never forget my first experience with a platform failure. It was Sunday morning and I awoke to a frantic email from one of my moderators in Germany. Someone had hacked the platform and my unpaid volunteer talked to the hacker and fended off the crazy threats. Then I started calling my team trying to find someone to fix the problem. (The platform version hadn’t been updated for a year and there were security holes that were easy to breach. It was playing old outdated songs and someone had noticed!) And Monday the CFO called a meeting to review the risks that we had been exposed to. (That wasn’t happy music!)

The reason that I love Community and Social Media strategy is that innovation only happens when you don’t sing the same song as everyone else does. Success in this career requires a lot of tenacity to convince others to understand the vision and importance of the organic long-term success of building relationships. It doesn’t happen immediately. I would argue that if your role as a Community Manager feels like you’re doing a great job singing the same old songs to the Karaoke machine then you may not be trying as hard as you could be. I challenge you to shake it up a bit and try out some new lyrics on your audience! I bet your Community will love it, grow with you and give you a standing ovation!

This is one of my favorite quotes.

Dance as if no one is watching, Sing as if no one is listening and Live every day as if it were your last!

I will admit that sometimes I feel that the true secret to being successful in this profession is to be brave enough to dance and sing when people are watching! That’s when the magic of the role is experienced and change happens!

If you’re intrigued by making your own music, spend some time browsing TopRank Marketing’s blog and slideshare account. You’ll find plenty of great ideas!

It’s been exciting to see the evolution of the Community Manager role and how it is becoming mainstream across organizations ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 50 and with no matter as to profit or non-profit.

People have been avidly interested in pursuing this type of role and want to know how they can gain the necessary skills. Back in June of 2008 I offered 2 training programs to meet that need. It went great until I got sucked into the tech startup world and social media monitoring. Since then I have continued to mentor and scale the reach here through my blog.

Periodically people would request my courses when they came across the old posts referencing training. I always felt bad when I had to explain that my day job was busier than busy. So, I’m really pleased to see that WOMMA and the The Community Roundtable are offering training courses that are specific to Community Management (in contrast to Social Media in general) and they are created by credible people in the industry. Earlier this week Jeremiah Owyang covered the pro’s and con’s of the certification aspect of the Community Manager Training courses.

These courses will:

• fast track your knowledge base on the expectations of community management
• open your eyes to aspects that you didn’t realize existed and cause you to have even more questions
• be excellent for those of you that have been assigned or are spending a portion of your time in this new role

They probably won’t:

• make it easier to get a job (employers are getting 100’s of app’s per position) or more pay
• ramp a company’s adoption of social media (ie: embrace the value of community & related culture shift)
• replace the value of volunteering and showing leadership in an online community and the related experience.

If you’re interested in exploring community management and strategy these courses are a good place to gain the skills and an overview.

I would highly recommend connecting with like-minded people in one of the following communities:

• Facebook group Community Manager, Advocate, and Evangelist

An active group that has new people joining everyday. There is a doc with social media jobs there.

• Community BackChannel

Membership is free, but there is a process for requesting it.

• CommunityAdmins.com

These active forums are a part of Patrick O’Keefe’s iFroggy network. Patrick is the author of Managing Online Forums.

• Community RoundTable

Jim Storer & Rachel Happe are the founders of this peer network. They have built a very active community that is based on resources, research and regular activities.

Seeking a job? Check out this Facebook group of Social Media Jobs

If you’re a practicing Community Manager, what resources have you found the most helpful?

The social web has greatly changed the search for the job seeker as well as the organization that is doing the recruiting. The interview starts long before the hiring manager meets the candidates on the day of the ‘interview’.

Over the past few weeks we have been in the process of hiring community managers. Here are some tips for those seeking this type of role.

Resume

• Your experience needs to be relevant to the position (it needs to be obvious)
• Include metrics for the impact that you had in previous positions

For example:

• Increased sales by X %
• Increased the community by X %
• Increased participation in the community by X %

Tip: Do not represent consulting as if you were an employee

Your Social Presence

• Google your name: What online presence do you have?
• LinkedIn – Some key aspects:

Do you have a complete profile that is public?

Do you have a number of references from previous employers?

Have you written references for others?

• Twitter presence – quality of tweets and a balance of followers to following

Preparation for the Interview

Research the company that you’re interviewing with. What talking points can you take with to your interview?

Research the person that you will be interviewing with. Do they have a personal blog or are on Twitter? That insight provides great conversation starters.

If your LinkedIn profile set to show  your activity, then the interviewer will see that you’ve viewed their profile.

All of the above interactions happen before the interview ever happens. They are all items that can be used to qualify candidates. If you’re applying for a social media role, take some time to ensure that your application stands out from the crowd.

If you’ve recently hired for a social media position, what additional tips would you give?