There are jobs directing campaigns from social networking sites.
Workers can sometimes get into trouble accessing social networking sites from work but others are paid to do so.
Over the past few years a new career has sprung up in social media and they're hiring.
Bonnie Bradley was working in online retail during an OE to Britain when she began working in social media.
Now she is a digital strategist with TBWATequila.
She says that online media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or even just email can be an exceptionally cheap way to lure in customers.
"It's the scale basically. Once you've put that initial investment of working out who you want to talk to and what you want to say, to contact multiple people is much cheaper than offline advertisements. It doesn't matter how you cut it," Bradley says.
Jobs in social media can be in advertising agencies or PR companies but some businesses are bringing on staff to look after the company's own online presence.
They can be content developers, creative designers and production staff or, in Bradley's case, a strategist. She looks after the big picture by focusing on how a brand is represented across various online media channels.
"I suppose there is a need for a generalist. There are so many different options that when you're coming up with a campaign and you're coming up with your creative execution, you do need to consider all of them."
As a social media strategist, Bradley has to decide on a number of things that have to be achieved.
"It's taking the business objective and planning out the links that you've got to move through. What tactically are you going to do? Do you need to create content? Where do you need to deploy that? When do you need to deploy that? How are you going to measure that?"
Each campaign has a specific business objective and will be targeted to a specific media channel much like conventional advertising models.
"Is it a campaign to raise awareness of a new brand or product or is it a campaign to drive a position or trial? And then you can have a look at the merits of each channel. There is always a compromise with budget as well."
Companies can spend quite a lot of money with traditional ad campaigns aimed at driving traffic to their website. But Bradley's job is to find cheaper ways to engage customers or potential customers.
"If you were to go to a platform like Facebook and create a community around a social object which might be the All Blacks jersey, for example, then there is the opportunity to reach people where they're already spending time. You basically make it cheaper to contact them so you're not paying to drive traffic to your website. Traffic is already there."
Instead of a traditional media rate card, social media has its own way of calculating the actual value of their online campaigns.
"They say for every post that you make, maybe every piece of content that you deploy or every social object that you deploy to a community, you take the post and you times the number of fans or people within that group by 1.5 and that creates how many impressions you're getting."
When social media workers start putting up multiple posts per day throughout the week, the number of eyeballs seeing that campaign starts to make business sense. Businesses can achieve a lot of media space simply by creating and deploying their own content online.
"If you can achieve that scale, it's really interesting from an earned media point of view as opposed to a paid media."
With a career in social media, the cost of your time is carefully measured against the business it brings in.
"How many people have I acquired and therefore what's my cost per acquisition? Does that live up to other channels that I might be using offline?"
Bradley is also called upon to help make the business case to clients that it is commercially viable for them to move into social media. The scope of this field is growing and so are the job prospects in this new and dynamic area.
But it's not as easy as sitting around all day making friends on Facebook. These niche channels require real expertise. Social media content creators have to be plugged in to the communities they're engaging with and can't accurately represent too many clients at once.
"When you delve into the digital space social, it's no one-night-stand. You're in it for the long haul so you have to accept that if I go into this space it's not just a one-off push. It's a commitment."
Salaries for mid level range from $50,000 to $90,000, with seniors rising above that. Bradley says businesses shouldn't be sold the idea that social media is hard and that they can't maintain a campaign themselves once it is established.
"It's not rocket science. It's no more difficult than understanding print."
The skills from print media are highly transferable into a career in the digital space but Bradley says there's still a lack of candidates. She says she would prefer to take on new people from outside the online advertising space.
"I think the industry hasn't been around long enough. There is real opportunity to find superstars from outside the digital industry at the moment."
For example, Bradley says the person she would pick to manage a community within Facebook would be a copywriter. But that copywriter would need to understand how to convince someone to perform a function such as click on something or submit a response.
Social media writers need to be able to write not just to a mass audience but in a one-on-one style engaging another individual. The key to online media is that it may take a little more time and a little more effort deconstructing the process of how the media works.
"Unfortunately, in the advertising world, they often say it's not necessarily hard, it's just hard work within that social space. It does take time and energy."
Contact David Maida at: www.DavidMaida.com
