Reference no: EM132278342

The past few years have been big for social media digital platforms that allow users to create and exchange content. Twitter went public and introduced a video-sharing app called Vine. Facebook responded with Instagram, and YouTube rolled out a new layout feature called One Channel, which allows users to focus on developing bases of followers. Spending on social media advertising now exceeds $4.6 billion annually, and most marketers predict that this number will continue to grow. Just what do social media managers do? It’s a fairly new position, so job descriptions understandably vary. Here, however, is a generic description crafted by a veteran social media executive: The Social Media Manager will implement the Company’s Social Media Strategy, developing brand awareness, generating inbound traffic, and encouraging product adoption. This role coordinates with the internal Marketing and PR teams to support their respective missions, ensuring consistency in voice and cultivating a social media referral network. Primarily, social media managers handle information and communications through social media outlets—tracking trends and determining posting rates, creating positive communications, and maintaining a congenial media relationship with a company’s community of customers. As you can also see from the job description, a key function of the position is coordination. Typically, social media managers work out of marketing departments and perform a variety of marketingrelated tasks—replying to customer inquiries (sales), responding to customer complaints (customer service), and handling external communications (public relations). At the same time, however, because they often manage the use of social media among all of a company’s employees and communicate information about all of its activities, the scope of responsibilities is company-wide. Even so, some social media managers aren’t quite sure how much “legitimacy” they’ve earned. “At the last place, I was a social manager,” reports one brand specialist at a large corporation, “high-level VPs would come over and say I was messing around on the Internet too much.” According to another veteran of corporate media management, “The biggest misconception is that, compared to other marketers, we don’t understand analytics or don’t have the education or background when it comes to the technical side.” Old-school executives, charges a third social media strategist, “see [social media] as the warm and fuzzy side of marketing. In reality, it’s a powerful revenue driver when it’s given proper funding and attention.... When you show them the ROI, people start changing their minds.”

Think It Over

1. Would you want to be a social media manager? Why or why not?

2. In what ways, if any, has social media influenced your buying habits?