New Comm Biz

There are obvious advantages to being involved in Social Media if you want to work in Social Media. But is it necessary?

Read/Write Web posted about the new NYT Social Media editor:
NYTimes Appoints First Social Media Editor

Little is known about Preston’s personal use of social media, she’s
either using aliases or is remarkably quiet around the web, and details
are still forthcoming about the new position she’ll fill. The Times has
done a remarkable job of engaging with social media so far, though, and
we have high hopes for this new post.

I’m no journalist and have very little understanding of what an “Editor” does. It usually comes with some sort of management level experience and (I think) is more about overseeing the writers and their content.

Arguably Jennifer Preston could do this without having to be very active in this space. In fact I think most of us would benefit from a *little* editorial oversight of our online activities.

This is especially true inside companies. Usually the person I want to connect with customers isn’t very active (if at all) in social media.

Yet some purists believe that in order to run social media initiatives you have to be a Social Media expert? If that’s true then wouldn’t the reverse be true? In order to run social media for a company you need to be an expert on the business?

My manager at HP had a LinkedIn profile and that’s it. He knew very little about social media (he knew enough to hire me though). On the other hand I knew almost nothing about printers (and stil don’t). But he was very knowledgable about our business and I was knowledgable enough about social media that between the two of us we were able to align business objectives with social media.

And let’s be honest here, just because someone is a power user of social media doesn’t by ay stretch mean they are going to be able to plan, launch or run a social media campaign.

Personaly I think the *business* of social media will benefit hugely if more non Kool-Aid drinkers got involved in the business side. And conversly I think business as a whole if more social media types got involved in the business side of companies.

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