Social Media Job Titles

I’m having trouble with job descriptions at the moment. As a social media management company, our job is a surreal mix of disciplines neatly packaged up as moderation, insight and engagement, but finding folks that have the complete set of skills we need is near on impossible. We’re lucky in that we’ve got people that have worked in community for years but many don’t have that advantage.

What is a community manager?

Take Community Manager for example. What exactly is a Online Community Manager? We have our own view but a quick look at available roles on the market rates salaries from 20 to 60k with a range of responsibilities that would make the Prime Minister gasp. True Community Management is highly under-rated and nothing annoys me more than so called social media experts creating best practice when they’ve managed nothing more than their own Twitter feed and Facebook presence.

Skills required for social media management

The difficulty in defining the skills required for social media management and communities is even harder for smaller companies and this was highlighted to me when presenting at a couple of Media Trust events recently. In the Third Sector where funds are tight, every penny has to work twice as hard as any other sector (well maybe apart from in government!) and that generally means roles are combined, responsibilities shared and even Jack has his work cut out to learn all the trades.

Managing social media

This is where we come in with our processes designed to take the pain out of managing social media as cost effectively as possible. That said, we’re always after good people so if you know anyone that can write great content, deal with the public, generate insightful reports, has experience of 20+ platforms and knows their Four Square from their four candles, send ‘em over :-)

Other useful posts

• The Four Tenents of the Community Manager
• Three Emerging Digital Careers to watch
• Community management: the essential capability of successful enterprise