Before answering the title question, take a moment and ask a second question: Is there a print ad specialist? Someone that knows everything about print ads? The question sounds silly, right? Because we know that print ads need first a creative influence, and then a good copywriter, and a great artist, to be effective. Next, you need a media buyer to put the newly created print ad in the correct publications or locations for it to reach the target audience. Not to mention, if you want the print to tie into other parts of an effective marketing campaign, you need the print to sync up with radio or television, as part of a full spectrum campaign.
Which one of these people, listed above, would you list as a “Print Ad Ninja?”
Social media strategists have been looked at the wrong way by the industry for a long time. This is mostly because of the technical requirements that differ from other types of advertising. In the past, it could be claimed as a completely different form of media because the skills required to make the advertisement come to life were found in the technical departments. Therefore, the ability to claim Social Media Guru, Ninja, Master, etc. were left to people that may not have the marketing skill, but who had the technical skill to make it happen.
Creating a marketing strategy, no matter what the medium, is more than simply the medium’s technical requirements. The ability to code in HTML, CSS, PHP, etc does not necessarily mean that the person can market. Just because I can string sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into pages, does not make me the next Stephen King.
A social media strategist has a lot more to do with the strategy, and a lot less to do with the use of technical tools. A true social media strategist is concerned with how to blend a marketing campaign into a medium that listens instead of speaking. Simply put, a social media strategist should be a part of your creative process, not a part of your IT department.
The influx of a younger generation that knows the ins and outs of the tools of social media does not worry the true social media strategist, the same way that the creation of blogs did not scare the professional writer. An architect is not afraid of a carpenter, is he? The fact that there is a plethora of new users in business that can help to build effective campaigns is a dream come true to a social media strategist, as this means he or she can spend less time doing the day to day process and can focus more on building strategies.
In answer of the question, “Are social media jobs dead?” the answer is a resounding “NO”. However, the ability to hide behind simple coding processes, the ability to claim Ninja skills based on technical computer literacy, is dying. To the true social media strategist, it couldn’t have happened soon enough.
