Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Social Media Pros Wanted-- Just one thing ...what makes a SM Pro?

I’m starting to notice a shift in the world of social media employment. While many organizations are still trying to get by with an intern running their social media efforts, others are coming to the realization that this Twitter/Facebook/YouTube thing is more than a fad. For example, check out this recent post from Agency Babylon. As you can see, a lot of the jobs listed on the Babylon post are not targeting fresh-faced college kids – these are posts from big shots like Target and Cargill, looking for experienced communicators who know how to leverage social media.

So now that it appears organizations are looking for experience in their social media hires, it would be interesting to learn what flavor of experience they’re looking for when selecting candidates. There are some clear success stories with social media (I love this recent example from Sears), but still a lot of disagreement about what makes a good social media strategy, even though most would agree having such a strategy is important.

Since a big part of my world is higher education, I’d point anyone asking “how should we use social media?” to this list from othersidenotes.com. It’s university-focused, but the general themes could be used by anyone in any organization – get personal with the people who matter to what you do.

What do you think? If you were hiring a social media pro (with a few years of communications experience under their belt) what criteria would you use to differentiate what I’m sure would be a big stack of applicants?

Monday, August 3, 2009

Wolf Shirt Motherload

Much thanks to @Drewcswain for submitting the first (and likely the last) wolf shirt photo to Minnesocia. As promised, it will be posted. So feast your eyes on one of the most epic displays of wolfshirtdom in all the Midwest (Wisconsin, in this case).