The surreal experience of launching a social media career.

It's hard to ignore the fact that social media is quickly becoming its own professional field, a fact that has many people wondering how these jobs will grow and shift in the coming years.

Such questions are no longer academic for me. As of yesterday, I am officially the Social Media Strategist for Luckie & Company. 

I’m tremendously excited about this opportunity and proud of my agency for its commitment and foresight. But it’s also surreal to imagine that my new career is one that’s just emerging from a primordial soup of technology that evolves by the hour.

What will jobs like mine look like in a year's time? While specific terms like "social media" might fade, there's no doubt the need will continue — and will likely be much larger. Who knows? Maybe these jobs become so commonplace that we’ll be having our own trade associations, college majors and recruitment seminars.

Before I stare too intensely into the crystal ball, I should tell you a little about my new job. If you’re into that kind of thing, check it out after the jump.

I’ve been a copywriter at Luckie since early 2006. Over the past year or two, we’ve been incorporating social media into our concepting more and more. Soon it had become such a daily topic, it seemed wise to focus our efforts even more with a social media strategist who could coordinate all this stuff.

So what will I be doing? Organizing training on trends and technology, developing social media components for new campaigns, helping with blogger outreach, creating long-term solutions for clients, lots of brainstorming, etc. Somewhere there’s a list with a lot of bullet points on it, but you get the idea.

What’s interesting is that advertising agencies like mine aren’t generally the ones leading the charge on this front. If you read Jeremiah Owyang’s lengthy roster of social media professionals, you’ll find tons of major corporations like IBM, Intel and Best Buy.

But as for agencies, he’s only found three — Avenue A/Razorfish, Fleishman-Hillard, and Digitas. I’m sure there are others who just haven’t asked to be put on the list, but still, it’s a strange day when agencies take a back seat on innovation compared to corporate behemoths like Cisco. (UPDATE: Jeremiah notes in the comments that his list is limited to companies of 1,000 employees or more. Still, I hope there are several more large agencies out there who have created similar positions and just haven't found the list yet.)

There is one big upside to seeing these jobs popping up across corporate America: the potential for profit is no longer in doubt.

Tackling the question of “Are social media jobs here to stay?”, the Mashable blog’s Ben Parr had this nice summary:

Read the job description for any social media job listing and you’ll come across evangelist, community, marketing, engagement, and viral quite often. The jargon, though, can be summed up in two words: retention and growth.

Companies generally have one overarching goal: to increase profits. And anyone can tell you that keeping current customers (or users) and adding new ones is directly related to that single goal. These two things, keeping current users happy and adding new users, are the purposes of social media jobs.

And that’s why these jobs are here to stay.

Comments

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Great blog, love the 'social path' theme, clver

To be clear, there were only three agencies that have more than 1000 employees. There are tons of agencies with fewer employees that have full time social media professionals.

[David Griner]

Thanks for the clarification, Jeremiah. Updated the post.

[Ben Parr]

So long as you provide bang for the buck to your company in the role, you shouldn't have a problem.

Good luck!

[Elizabeth Warren]

David, your job is exactly what I wish I were doing and a career path I'm hoping to pave way for in my company...Gives me hope!

Unfortunately, I'm low on the totem pole and relatively new in my career path, so what kind of advice could you give for someone like me, working in a print media environment, to help upper management realize that it may be a good investment to focus more on social media.

[followthatdog]

Congratulations! That is fantastic. I've been loving your blog, and it seems like you couldn't have found a better match for your interests with the new job.

[Dan]

Great. Tell me, if you left Luckie & Company, what would happen to the content on this blog? Who 'owns' it? (assuming you don't part own Luckie & Company!)

Just a thought - it's something I'm developing into a potential issue as more and more employees set up b2b blogs where they company name check. I'd be interested to get your thoughts.

[David Griner]

@Elizabeth - I'll try to drop you a line to get more specifics of your situation. In my case, it was a combination of my strong personal interest in this field, a lot of slow-and-steady work in-house and with clients, and a truly open-minded executive team. I'd say to just be sure your passion for social media is known to your superiors. Sooner or later, they'll realize this tide is unavoidable.

@Dan - This blog is owned by Luckie, which has shown tremendous faith in giving me a free hand with the content. I can't say for sure what would happen if I left, but I would hope the blog would live on as a part of Luckie.

[Dave Allen]

Luckie has certainly done the right thing in creating this position and congratulations on being the one who is bestowed the new title. After 3 years running my music and media blog Pampelmoose.com I joined Nemo Design in February 2007 to do what you do. In the 18 months since joining, my job has morphed into a Social Media position with a new title, Director, Insights & Digital Media, a position that has me taking care of all of Nemo's digital footprint, from the company web site down through all of our employee blogs. The knowledge garnered internally by having so many of our staff blogging is invaluable when it comes time to advise our clients on online strategy. These positions may morph yet further but they are here to stay.

[Matt S.]

So long as companies need to let people know about their products and services, there will always be avenues to get the word out. Right now, social media is a large avenue. Will that change? Probably, but so long as you know how to tell a lot of people about something, your job is safe!

[KatFrench]

David,

Welcome to the jungle, baby. Like you, I come from a copywriting background, showed an interest (aka "obsession") with social media and blogging, and eventually ended up with a spiffy "Social Media Manager" job title at an advertising agency.

I think that after a few years of establishing social media as a specialty within marcomm, eventually (truthfully, it's already happening to some degree, as I'm sure Jeremiah will attest) sub-specialties will start forming. Online reputation is too big to not eventually be it's own specialty. Online community management is too big to not eventually be its own specialty. Ad infinitum.

It's a crazy time, and a crazy field, to be in, but that's probably why I like it so much.

Added your blog to my RSS reader--I think that you'll find you're right: there are more of us out there than has been documented on Jeremiah's list.

Oh, and good luck!

[Paul Fabretti]

Congrats dude! Glad to see that social media is gaining such credibility as to create dedicated positions.

It's interesting that as you say clients have adopted these kinds of social media/community roles yet so few agencies have done the same.

It makes me wonder whether or not agencies saw the level of involvement in ongoing social media relations as something that was beyond their remit or capabilities of developing (or in fact more than their clients were willing to trust them with).

What's more interesting is that pr agencies have long had these retainers in place to ensure that ongoing social media relations can happen.

Ok, so this is slightly different to the role you have described but launching a blog is only the first and easiest step - managing the ongoing relationship is much more important and i bet will take up much more of your role than you think!!

But what do i know, i'm based in the uk where people are still being educated on what a blog is!

[Alan Wolk]

David: Congratulations on the move!! You are lucky to be at Luckie, which is a forward thinking company. Even luckier to make the move from creative (I think you and I may be among a half dozen creatives who've made that move-- most agencies get their social media people from planning, consulting or PR.)

Since we're both carving out new territory here, it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Glad to have you along for the ride though.

Alan

[Chris Thilk]

I'm way late in doing so (at least I see Alan was just here yesterday so I don't feel so bad) but congratulations, man. This is a perfect position for you to be in and Luckie is sure to do some great things with you leading the social media charge there.