So I’ve been doing a whole lot of interviewing for a Social Media Manager position here at SocialMediaMarketing.com. With so much content online about interviewing best practices, I thought that everyone would be an expert in interviewing, especially if you hang out in the blogosphere. There are so many career blogs out there with solid advice that it blows my mind when I see someone walk into an interview completely unprepared and clueless about who I am and what the company does.
Aside: Note, I guess I am partly at fault here and need to screen out interviewees much more thoroughly, but that’s another post
This post is not about how to interview. If you’re looking for interview advice, I suggest checking out these interviewing publications. This post is about the huge disconnect I see between a person who participates in and loves social media and one who can perform well in the corporate environment.
Social media vs corporate
I have worked in the corporate world, started my own startup, and established an online presence through social media. I’ve seen all three worlds and truly understand the underlying workings of each one. From my experience, I believe that being excellent at social media does not translate to being excellent in the corporate world. Here are my reasons:
Note: Please feel free to disagree with me in the comments section
Social Media does not prepare you to work in teams
Social media does teach you how to make friends online, build relationships, share your thoughts, share ideas, and meet amazing people. However, when it comes time to building and leading a team to accomplish a project, social media does not contribute to this skill-set. In the blogosphere, I have learned how to build a quality site and drive traffic to it; but to be perfectly honest, I have never really gotten the chance to work with someone in the blogosphere to accomplish a certain deadline or to team up on a project.
Note: This is actually changing soon but the people I’m teaming up with actually have corporate experience as well
Even on this blog we’re not necessarily working in teams. Dan has done a great job at assembling a team of independent bloggers and letting us loose to write content on our own. He built a great system (which I accredit to his corporate experience), but we’re not necessarily working as a team here.
Social media does not prepare you to deal with clients
Clients are a tough cookie to handle: selling, closing, writing proposals, writing agreements, and pricing out the project. Are these things that you have learned from social media? Sure you can read a post about “how to sell,” but ultimately, you’re not learning how to sell a service to a large company.
A great rebuttal here is that you learn how to sell yourself in social media. While I fully agree with this statement, I feel that selling in the corporate world (at least in my experience) is completely different from selling yourself to a group of peers in the blogosphere. Closing a client like Activision is on a whole other level when compared to commenting on a peer’s blog to build a relationship with him.
Furthermore, project management is completely different from community management. While community management involves Tweeting with your followers, responding to comments, and writing engaging content (all a solo process btw), project management involves developing a strategy for the client, assigning tasks to your team, making sure that goals are met, and actively communicating with the client to make sure they are happy.
Social media does not prepare you to do things you hate to do
Lets be honest here. The blogosphere is all about doing stuff you LOVE. Heck, now is the time to “Crush it” to cash in on your passions. I am again 100% for this and feel this is the idea goal in life; however, this definitely does not prepare you for the corporate route.
I remember back in my old consulting job, I was getting paid $55K a year to build binders and quality check excel sheet print outs. I didn’t last very long at the job, but I did learn a very valuable lesson – someone has got to do it.
A corporate firm is like a machine, and like any well-oiled machine, every single elements plays its part. Some people will be selling, others will be project managing, and still others will be doing the grunt work that we all love to do 
If you’re actively engaged in social media, then you’re constantly doing what you love to do and will mostly likely not last too long doing grunt work at a corporate firm or in a team setting.
Social media does not prepare you to build systems
Oh boy, this one is the mother-load here. Without systems, you have a disorganized, frantic company that cannot scale. Without systems, you will utterly hate your job because you will be doing all the tasks yourself.
When you’re running a blog, it’s simple to handle everything without systems because you’re capable of managing everything yourself. Writing content, responding to comments, and building relationships is a one-man show, and it should be.
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Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m a blogger and I love the independence of social media. However, when it comes to the corporate world, I feel that there are skill-sets involved with it that most bloggers take for granted. If you are able to lead teams, close clients, do things you hate, build systems, and you are a lover of social media, hit me up at Jun [at] SocialMediaMarketing.com and we can chat about the Social Media Manager position.
Author:
Jun Loayza is the President of SocialMediaMarketing.com and the Co-Founder of Viralogy.com. Reach out to him to chat about startups, fitness, relationships, or pretty much anything else that floats your boat. Blog and Twitter
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Interesting perspective. What a challenge to career development! How do you expose someone to both sets of skills on a routine basis to prepare them to step into a role such as yours? I have gone from working in an office environment doing all things corporate, to a position where a good portion of my daily interaction comes through social media and I consider my situation somewhat unique. Perhaps what you are looking for will become more mainstream as social media takes a more prominent role in the way we conduct business. Good luck!
Jun: I think you hit the nail on the head. Social media is independent, and the corporate world is interdependent. Big difference! For all the communicating that goes on in the online world, it’s very interesting how many people, in person, cannot communicate. I think people like the relative anonymity that the online world provides, and when you get them face-to-face it’s a different story.
Interactions and relationships are practiced. The more you do in person, the better you will become. Regardless of all of our online chatter, nothing beats picking up the phone or meeting someone in person.
Hello Jun!
Maybe “in general” but I do believe that’s evolving and my experience doesn’t agree with some of your statements. Through #brandchat (the chat about branding that I created with @davidsandusky + moderate every week) we’ve been able to work together, even tackle managing the project of moderating the chat when the main moderator is not available. While I agree that while social media may not “prepare you” to work in teams in affords you the opportunity to work utilizing an entire new set of ever changing communication tools. Every team goes through the cycle of “Form, Storm, Norm and Perform” and because of the nature of social media “form and storm” seem to cycle back and forth as Twitter grows and adjusts, as Facebook adds search functions, status updates of Fan Pages in their Home Page stream – and so teams adjust. And, I do believe you learn to develop systems (even in a state of flux) because it’s so easy to be ‘lost in time’ in social media that a definitive system must be in place that mirrors the strategy of the corporate or company brand (or the individual’s brand for that matter). I disagree that it doesn’t give you the preparation to deal with clients – I believe it does, if you keep in mind what social media (networking) is – it’s networking – building and developing relationships. Just like you wouldn’t walk into a chamber mixer and start selling to people (they would flee from you in droves) you use social media to deepen the relationship and “up” the communication activity. Just like in networking, social media or social networking, helps you navigate the “ins and outs” of a company, learn who the leaders and links are, engage in conversation more often than by email, phone or in person. If you think of it as word of mouth on steroids, you might see it in a different light and how you address it as a communication tool with your clients, contacts and referral sources.
I am actually doing a voluntary case study about Social Media in an Enterprise Business environment. I work in a medium-sized software company and I am still struggling to incorporate Social Media on handling projects and meeting customers’ demands (focusing on consulting and systems support). I am NOT tasked to do this and it is my personal choice. Experimenting if I can introduce the idea to the team. My verdict so far is….. it is not going to fully work right now but it has potential to be supplemental in the long run.
In the end, it all boils down to the corporate culture, the customers’ preferred communication medium, and the personalities of your teammates and customers as well. Yes… there are so many factors.
The company that I work with is a conservative company. We still stick to the traditional yet effective approach. I am in an environment where Social Media is still percieved as for “youngsters” and mainly for personal matters. Although, they are open on applying it (most especially in marketing), they still do not know how to utilize it (at least for now).
Social Media would be useful for managing customer experience. This could be inter-departmental and not only focusing on one or two departments.
In my opinion, a Social Media expert should be designated in a company. This is an opportunity to find the areas where Social media can be utilized. It may indeed vary from one company to another and also by the type of products/services the company is are selling. This is the type of job that I want to do and I am still waiting for the company to be open about the idea.
With the amount of attention that social media and social networking is receiving by more mainstream media, it is no surprise that people who are migrating away from a corporate environment are those of the entrepreneurial spirit.
The timing for some of these people to explore their creative side could not be more perfect. If most people answered honestly, they would rather escape the confines of a cubicle community and take the risk of making their dreams come true.
Social media is a tool that can also enhances a persons ability to thrive in the more structured environment found in the corporate world. Those who can implement the strategies offered by those currently thriving in social media will benefit greatly.
Eventually, I believe that more executives in the corporate arena will implement departments that are entirely dedicated to social media. Most companies have accounts payable/receivable, human resources, customer service and one day, a social media department.
The people filling these positions will most likely be already equipped with the personality as well as the skills in social media to excel beyond the expectation of the employer.
At the time,
Hello,
With the huge market share for other forms of multimedia, social media marketing companies tap into this area to incorporate their promotions and allow it to spread into the networks.
Hey i’m through the Uk, What an incredible submit reagarding social media marketing that is. Thanks for this tends to are available in handy.
Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue
Social media is media for social interaction as a superset beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate.[