Tuesday, December 16th, 2008...2:00 pm
Social Media Job Description
You are a Facebook goddess, the fastest Twitter tweeter on the planet. Can you take your mad social media skillz and turn it into a job? How exactly would you describe that job?
I don’t know, but I came across a job posting the other day that seemed to sum it up for me: a non-profit was looking for a “social media curator.”
Now, I’m a big fan of museums so the idea of “curator” resonates with me. A curator, in the traditional sense, is someone who is responsible for both preserving and promoting a collection of physical artifacts. The artifacts were brought together from a broad range of places – and no artifact was created by the museum itself.
A social media curator assembles pieces of information from across the web and presents it to an audience. Of course, you could call also label this job as an “online editor” – but I don’t think so.
It used to be that an editor composed a whole out of a bunch of disparate pieces – but usually using content that was proprietary. So the editor of the New York Times would only use stories by their reporters, (or purchased through a service like Reuters.)
In the age of the internet, this has gone sideways. A senior VP of the New York Times, in fact, recently commented that “the role of the online editor is changing from someone who curates the content of his/her particular vehicle to curating all of the content on the web that is of interest to his audience and making that content readily accessible.”
Note her use of the word “curate” – which brings us back to my original point. Facebook goddesses, extreme bloggers, mad tweeters: your next job might be as a social media curator.
7 Comments
December 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
What is the skill set of this job type as it becomes more common? Is it just a “super-user” of social tools? Or are there other things a young professional might focus on to pursue this sort of path?
December 16th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Hi, Walter.
Good question – I have a vision of a teenager telling his mom that time spent on Facebook is really “professional development.”
I guess, in keeping with my focus on the idea of curator, that the necessary skills would really lie in the ability to create a conversation; to understand the needs of an audience, and be able spot patterns across different media. A good museum curator can find the connections between a bunch of historical odds and ends, and use them to tell a story that her audience wants to hear. Maybe a social media curator does the same thing, but with the bits and pieces of media from across the internet.
That’s a pretty general answer – in real terms? Being able to write coherently and quickly is key. Being able to assimilate large amounts of data – great research skills. Having some ability to sell your ideas, to market them. Any other ideas?
December 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am
All of those things seem important. I might add a familiarity with the growing social science literature on the social patterns of the net. It’s possible that some of this more “formal” knowledge of what motivates people to use social tools and participate in online communities could lend some legitimacy to a candidate. While being a “super-user” may be a big component, being able to speak confidently about this sort of research literature might go a long way towards assuring organizations that the candidate can add value.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I think that another interesting connection to the idea of a curator is the fact that they choose specific items from a large array to promote.
Those specific items were seen as valuable or worthy in the middle of all the noise and deserved to be displayed much like a social media curator must pull specific pieces of information that she finds ‘worthy’ out of all the noise (blogs, tweets, news feeds etc.) to promote (rather than pushing ALL relevant info out to followers).
Great post! Thanks for the thoughts!
December 18th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Thanks, Matt and Walter!
Walter – Great point. I agree that an understanding of the academic literature is important. Case in point: I’m still working through my Masters degree, and have found that the “formal” literature, complemented by on-the-ground observations, provides a great foundation for understanding the changes that are happening to the web, and our society.
So I wonder when the first Bachelor of Arts in Social Media Sociology will be developed?
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
The website is brilliant. I was shown and told about you in thought/dream state and then searched for you online. I have been doing the rainbow healing on myself since and love it. I extend much gratitude to you for receiving and spreading this gift.”
Terrence
Job Description
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