No doubt 2009 was the year of Social Media, when lots of companies recognised the need of participating in the online conversation. The importance of this marketing discipline brought the role of Social Media/ Community Manager to the agency or company team structure. Some agencies preferred to transform their digital or online PR staff into a social media strategists, however there is more than digital and PR experience a social media guru would need. If you are a marketing specialist, wondering if your skills and experience would qualify for that juicy and probably 2010’s most wanted marketing job, or if you are an employer looking to hire someone to be responsible about the company social media strategy, here is the job description.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Research

• Constantly monitor and be aware of current trends in social media, networking and monitoring tools.
• Be on top of industry trends; monitor most engaging topics – most re-tweeted, most downloaded, most shared, etc. by industry.
• Research on key competitors for every new client – where are they active, what social media tactics do they use, how do they engage.
• Research on best practices – what works best and what- doesn’t.
• Identify key/targeted networking platforms, forums and blogs by industry and solution area.

• Research on target audience – what are their interests, where the target public is: online spaces/ networks/ communities; how many hours on average they spend online and where

Implement

• Be the eyes and ears of the brand as if your own reputation depended on it
• Minute by minute participate in conversations that surround the brand content, answer comments, be a mediator.
• Identify threats and opportunities in user generated content surrounding the brand.

• Establish and cultivate positive relationships with key/targeted bloggers, and/or identify brand marketers and PR managers who should be monitoring and influencing these relationships.
• Develop and manage pages on popular consumer social networking websites such as Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, Second Life, MySpace, etc. (depending on targeted channels) as well as popular technology sites intended to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to the site.
• Coordinate social media activities by actively engaging in consumer and industry conferences, blogs, video sharing, online chats, wikis, etc., to promote brand messaging and increase brand awareness resulting in driving brand traffic to the site.
• Engage in regular participation within the customer community, including the review of user blogs, wikis and communities such as sascommunity.org.
• Recruit, develop and coach new bloggers and blog editors.
• Manage the day-to-day blogger activities; proactively identifying and developing blog posts, recruiting bloggers and assigning blog ideas to others.

• Create content for feeds and snippets in various social media sites.
• Help with making corporate website social media and search-engine friendly – from fan badges, share/save buttons, to optimising tags, page descriptions, RSS feeds

Monitor and Report

• Track and monitor the success of online initiatives both qualitative and quantitative resuls (i.e. impressions, reach and influence)
• Prepare case studies and campaign results presentations
• Create and update daily, weekly and monthly reports

• Analyze campaigns and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations and plans for revising the social media campaigns.

Internal relations

• Develop company social media policy, as a part of the employee guidelines.
• Educate staff on the implementation and use of new technologies.
• Promote social media activities internally.

Skills

• Demonstrated experience with Web 2.0 channels & great affinity for learning new technologies.
• Strong relationship building skills, including negotiation & executive interaction, ability to coach others.
• Have excellent project management skills.
• Ability to develop a business vision for social media, including goals & results
• Leadership/decision-making: skilled at articulating to executives and internal teams the importance of social applications and is able to make calm recommendations during crises. Be able to exercise good judgment with quick response time.
• Flexible communication skills: Strong editorial writer. Able to present needs and plans and communicate internally, has a distinct, personable voice for external engagement. Manage negative situations toward positive outcomes.
• Be a team-player and a positive-thinker.
• Be budget-savvy: manage budget while hitting performance goals.