Mysterious Titles – What does THAT person do?

Posted on | July 31, 2009 | View Comments

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/stasiland/

There has been some public outcry against the growing trend of social media titles at companies. Often this is a community manager or social media manager type of title. There is pushback from those that “understand” social media because it’s not a marketing discipline that’s in a vertical it’s a tool to be used the same as a phone or email. Or as Trey and I talked about last week it shouldn’t be in a silo, which is what larger companies tend to do.

Now of course that ruffles my feathers a bit because I don’t like people that are smarter, more successful and wiser than me say that what I do for a living is wrong.

Here’s why I don’t think it is wrong – first large companies need internal people they trust to help them navigate the channels of new technologies, particularly older large companies. Many chose the consultant route, which is fine but there is a level of internal engagement that is missed by not being fully engaged internally.

Second, I agree on naming Social Media XYZ isn’t always the best. Of course there are exceptions to every rule but often the title doesn’t line up with the role (also common in large companies). I’ve been talking with vendors and others internally who always ask about my role – what do I do exactly – and in the last two months I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and learning. Most of the the things that come across my desk have one singular thing in common. They involve new technology. It could be a facebook this or that, or twitter or yammer or iPhone, Android, etc. At the end of the day they are new ways of communicating via technology both communicating internally, and communicating to guests and customers. And as it is with the new frontier or the wild, wild, west (pick your metaphor poison) there are lots of possibilities and few opportunities. So I’ve adopted the phrase “emerging media” to describe the area I work in, and the adjectives “discover and vett” to describe what I do with those few gem opportunities I find in the emerging media space. I like where I’ve landed on the phrase and it seems to be a bit more encompassing than social media, or web 2.0, or new media. However, if you’ve got a better one phrase – shoot it at me.

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