The future of social media and the social media manager position

This is an interesting article on the future of social media and the social media manager position: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/01/social-media-manager/

Since this is a link blog, I don't usually provide commentary, but I think I'll make an exception in this case.

This article can be taken several ways.  It talks about the death of the social media manager.  But, it also says the growth in social media manager positions has slowed to 50%... that’s still pretty good.  It also says that social media is now becoming everyone’s responsibility and “Compared to a year ago, there are 13 times as many jobs on Indeed that involve the use of social media in some way.”  Also, according to the article, “Last year, IBM (IBM) saw a 400% surge in sales after implementing a social selling program, and 61% of U.S. marketers now use social media to generate new business.”

 

Maybe the key is in the quote  by William Ward -- "’Business requires people with the skills and understanding on how to use ... social media professionally in an integrated and strategic way,’"  I think I agree that social media manager positions may tend to fade as the media becomes more integrated into every aspect of business life … and that’s probably the way it should be.

To me, the bigger issue is about interpersonal influence and ways to stimulate it, often by creatively engaging customers and often through the use of social media.  Social media is just a set of tools that enable us to do that more and better than ever before.  As the 2008 book Groundswell pointed out, the social media technologies come last.  People, objectives, and strategy come before. 

For me, the big question is “What does this mean in terms of teaching and research?”