I read an interesting article today, passed through my radar thanks to a tweet from @GuyKawasaki “What does a social media officer really do?” with a link to this article from Business Week: Twitter Twitter Little Stars. It was a timely read as the topic of social media within organizational contexts is front and centre of my work these days.
Just before leaving on my trip to Indonesia, I drafted a document for work – a brain dump of sorts – on the use of social media within a large organizational setting. One of the principles I mentioned (and always come back to whenever I’m in discussions around social media) is the importance of understanding business needs as a foundation to help guide decisions. Before deciding what to do or how to approach social media, the first thing for a business to understand is why?
The Business Week article has a few nice nuggets of information, one of which I think nicely reinforces this point. One sentence in particular caught my attention:
“experienced social media directors—business strategists capable of identifying a company’s needs and solving them using social media tools—can command $120,000 a year and up”
My First Thought
I like this. Social media director as a business strategist, i.e. someone who focuses on the business first, solving business needs, and it just so happens that they’re using social media tools to do this. This is an important point that I think is still often overlooked in discussions around social media, and even when it is discussed, still tends to be glossed over.
My Second Thought
$120,000?! I think I need to reposition my career!
