The emerging careers of '09: Advergirl's predictions.

 A year ago, my job title of "social media strategist" didn't exist. Two years ago, the term "social media" hadn't even emerged yet. Now it's one of the fastest-growing fields in marketing.

So what new jobs and responsibilities will emerge in 2009? I've asked five of my favorite forward thinkers to weigh in. Today we start with my good friend Leigh Householder, a brand strategist for Ologie in Columbus and much-acclaimed author of the Advergirl blog. Here's her take:


We've reached the acceleration point for social media. The year ahead will take the opportunities and impact of these new expectations (and associated technologies) deeper into more lives and enterprises. The demand for knowledge and experience will grow exponentially, creating the need for a number of new roles:

• Immersion officers in agencies and marketing organizations. No longer can digital and social be the province of a few. The separate departments and sub-brands will increasingly be banished. "Getting" how to create for all mediums will become tablestakes for creative partners. If it doesn't all work together, it doesn't work. Immersion officers will help print and ad vets quickly ramp up on the changing consumer landscape and become part of an integrated — versus complementary — team.

• Channel chatters in B2B organizations. 2009 will be the year social hits the channel. Not in the form of buzzy applications or silly promotions, but in the form of 1:1 interactions. No longer will communication be pushed blindly into the field. Instead, using white-labeled versions of applications like Facebook and Twitter, it will be posted for a community that can give immediate feedback, elevate its own best ideas and have live conversations with HQ.

• Artifact designers in the creative department: What can you give someone that they will want to share? That they'll want to keep in a file, tack on a board, display proudly? These brand artifacts are fundamentally social. The pieces, words and ideas that people emotionally attach to and take into their own authentic conversations without being asked to are the anecdote to every aggravating contest and gimmick that currently crowds the social scene. Increasingly, creative departments will be looking for these clever conversationalists who can translate campaigns into collectibles.

• Idea miners in product development: There are a finite number of resources in any company. No matter how brilliant the minds, there will always be limits to what they can do, what they solve. Increasingly, we'll see a change in the values built around development. One that moves the MVP from problem solver to solution finder. This shift will create roles for deft connectors who can find and activate unexpected groups of people (across vast geographic and expertise divides) to crash a problem. These idea miners will focus on communicating challenges and sifting through ideas to find the right solutions.
  
  
• Human network coordinators in sales and marketing: LinkedIn will change the nature of the "warm lead." The workforce will quickly become the frontline of connecting enterprises to their next big clients. Coordinators in marketing will be charged with mining employee "friend" and "connection" lists to find opportunities for introductions.

• Social specialists in internal communications: While marketing is making plans for its next big social "campaign," employees throughout the company are having incidental interactions with customers, partners, and potential employees in their own social networks everyday. In many cases, their share of voice dwarfs the company's megaphone. Increasingly, companies will recognize the power that individual employees have in socializing their brands and empower them in big and small ways. Operationally, the front line will get permission to deal 1:1 with customers across mediums. Throughout the enterprise, social specialists will focus internal communications on delivering compelling, relevant content that both aligns the workforce and powers conversation.

To read more from Leigh, be sure to head over to Advergirl and subscribe.

Also in this series:
• How coding and culture will shape the jobs of '09.
• Want to be a Conversation Auditor when you grow up?
• Will '09 be the year of the strategist?

Comments

[Dan Shust]

Love this post Leigh. Hope at least some of it comes true!