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Here is my contribution to a recent article on imediaconnection.com, on the quality of the social media workforce and a few other issues related to social media. I know that most of you won’t see it there, so I’m sharing it with you here. You can read the entire post here: Is a social media bubble ready to burst? My portion is on the second page, and here it is in its entirety:
“The quality of the social media workforce is a direct reflection on the hiring managers, who in many cases have no idea what skills are needed for this emerging role,” says Angela Connor, social media manager at Capstrat. “When the role isn’t clearly understood or well-defined, hiring mistakes are unavoidable. There’s a growing list of people with titles like social media strategist who have never developed any kinds of strategies in their entire career. They know enough about social media to talk themselves into a position that has no real objectives or success metrics and three months in, everyone is miserable.”
According to Connor, a big part of what’s driving social media to staff up with a less-than-qualified workforce is the misguided belief that millennials are somehow social media ninjas by birth. The result, Connor says, is that agencies and brands place more responsibility in the hands of their interns than they should.
But Connor isn’t fully convinced that blind faith in millennials means there’s a bubble. Or, at least, she’s not fully convinced that the bubble will burst with devastating effect. According to Connor, the first generation of social media workers (those who began working in the field when nobody was talking about social media) are moving up in the world, and that’s a good thing. “If these individuals stay true to what they know, maintain a high-level view of both social media and its potential, and continue to be students of the craft, they will set the bar high and make a real difference,” Connor says.
What are your thoughts on my take?
How does one guy come up with an idea to help others and turn that into an insane empire that continues to grow exponentially and receives rave reviews and word of mouth that most of us would die for?
Don’t ask me, ask Peter Shankman. He’s the one who has taken his passion for helping others, and keen understanding of building relationships and PR and turned it into something pretty amazing in ‘Help a Reporter Out,’ affectionately known as HARO.
The man who told me and others 9 short months ago, that the press release would be dead in 36-months has issued a press release with some amazing figures and that simply cannot be ignored. The man builds community every time he sends an email. Now how many people can lay claim to that? I wish I could, but I can’t…and community building is my thing!
Here’s an excerpt from Shankman’s site, detailing this monster growth:
In August 2008, there were 1500 journalists using HARO, sending out 650 queries per month to about 20,000 sources.
Today, there are 30,000 journalists who have used HARO, sending out more than 3000 queries per month to over 80,000 members.
And here’s an excerpt from the official press release:
The number of advertisers for HARO’s free-for-both-subscribers-and-journalists service skyrocketed 3900% from August 2008 to August 2009. The HARO staff rose 400 percent in the past year. (in Non-PR-speak, that means we hired four people.) Revenues over the past year have leaped from $15,000 as of August 2008 to just over $1MM as of August 2009 with advertising inventory on HAROs already sold out for 2009.
Congrats to Peter and HARO. Peter is a very down to earth, fun guy. He wrote the foreword for my book, in the midst of all that he has going on with HARO AND he answers my e-mails.
It doesn’t get any better than Peter. I look forward to seeing what you do with HARO next.
BTW, you can see the full release on Peter’s site Shankman.com.
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