A Blog: The Path to a Social Media Job

By Dr. Todd Bacile | October 9, 2013

Want a Social Media Job? Get a Blog

I often hear the following question: ‘What can I do to land a social media job?’ My answer: write and maintain your own blog. My work as a marketing professor puts me in a unique position of working with people who have big dreams, yet limited professional experience. Working in social media as a career is appealing to many students. Having a blog is a great first step for several reasons.

A Blog Showcases Writing Skills

A knock against many young people — and U.S. business students in particular — is that writing and communication skills are lacking. Authoring blog posts with some degree of frequency is one way to showcase writing skills. In this way, a blog serves as a portfolio of not only topical areas of expertise, but also the ability to write well.

Writing in Micro-bursts is a Talent

Sociocultural shifts change how information is disseminated and digested. For example, one of the founding principles for USA Today in 1982 was to write stories geared toward consumers who grew up in TV’s soundbite era. This shift in writing style to shorter stories and inserting more images was a huge win for USA Today. We no longer live in 1982, but similar evolutions in media consumption are occurring.

Media consumption is moving toward micro-bursts of information dissemination. Old “rules” are dying. You need shorter stories. Shorter paragraphs. Shorter sentences. For example, many blogging professionals suggest very brief paragraphs in a blog post. I strive for 60-70 words. Look at something you have recently written: do you write in 60-70 word paragraphs? This is one example of how blogs are unique to traditional writing. It’s a talent to be honed.

The World Needs Content Creators

One of the more popular entry-level positions in social media marketing and public relations is as a ‘content creator / writer‘. Your blog illustrates to prospective employers that you have the baseline skills and knowledge to create compelling content people want to read and share with others. A personal mantra I live by is to ‘Go where the jobs are!’.

A Blog is a Networking Tool

The more you blog, the more connections you will make. How or what you make of your network is up to you. Every comment, retweet, Like, +1, and/or the action of sharing one of your posts has the opportunity to build your social capital. In this manner, the content you write serves as a valuable springboard to turn posts into conversations; and conversations into meaningful relationships.

The rest is up to you

The beauty of the social web is that there are many experienced people willing to share success stories and helpful social media resources. If you are not an expert, do not get discouraged. Seek out helpful tips and tutorials. You learn by gaining hands-on experience. Writing a blog is no different.

Dr. Todd Bacile (@toddbacile) is a Marketing Professor at Loyola University New Orleans and holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from Florida State University. Social Media Marketing Magazine ranks him as one of the Top 100 Marketing Professors on Twitter. Have a question or comment? Post it here and you will receive a response.

Social Media Marketing & Mobile Marketing: A Useful Resource Guide

By Dr. Todd Bacile | August 27, 2013

A question posed to me from a fellow professor last week was, “What books or resources would you recommend for new media marketing topics?” The following books in each subject area highlight marketing philosophies and paradigm shifts that social media and mobile technologies have introduced. I personally have read each of the resources below and see great value in each book.

Follow the Authors on Twitter

Following each book’s summary is a link to the Twitter account(s) for the author(s). If you want more information or have comments for the authors you can connect with them on Twitter!

Connected Consumers

The End of Business as Usual presents a complex “connected consumer” revolution that is taking place. Ubiquitous mobile connections and social networks have created a network economy and interest graphs, where consumers easily share experiences and influence others. The author, Brian Solis, points out that a firm’s marketing audience has now become an audience with an audience of audiences, among many other unique perspectives.

Socialnomics posits that social media has created a people-driven economy through connected networks. The author, Eric Qualman, makes several interesting points, while serving up memorable quotes such as, “The 30-second commercial is being replaced by the 30-second review, tweet, post, status update, and so on.”

Information Transparency

Youtility shows the reader how helpful, useful, relevant information supplied by a firm is turning traditional marketing upside-down. The author, Jay Baer, uses several useful statistics and easy-to-read charts to support his positions. There is business value in these numbers!

Influence Marketing with Social Scoring

Return On Influence presents the topic of social scoring metrics such as Klout and PeerIndex. The author, Mark Schaefer, is well known for his social influence consulting work and discussing Klout on his blog. Influence marketing is controversial for some people and often creates a lot of buzz. This book illustrates how influence and social media go hand-in-hand. In effect, “Influence has been democratized.”

Second Screen Marketing

Social TV shows that the internet has not killed TV. Instead, this book posits that the internet has become TV’s best friend! Examples and cases illustrate TV programs are social; and in combination the web, social media, and mobile devices serve as the second-screen lightning rods to amplify consumer-to-consumer conversations about TV shows. The authors, Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin, use strategically placed and QR codes to link to “bonus” content.

Social Media Marketing 101

Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach is geared toward a college course, with a nicely designed array of chapters focusing on social media marketing strategy and planning. The book contains an eight-step social media marketing plan model, along with a completed plan for a fictitious company. The authors are Melissa Barker, Donald Barker, Nicholas Bormann, and Krista Neher.

Mobile Marketing 101

Go Mobile presents a nice array of mobile marketing strategies and topics that any marketer should be familiar with. Mobile optimized ads, SMS campaigns, mobile apps, tablet computing, and location-based marketing examples are plentiful.  The authors, Jeanne Hopkins and Jaime Turner, have a chapter devoted to how several Fortune 500 firms use mobile marketing.

Fundamentals of Mobile Marketing: Theories and Practices is a nice supplement to the prior text. This book delves into a highly technical summary of mobile’s evolution, along with several academic theories and models prevalent to ubiquitous devices. The author, Shintaro Okazaki, is a widely published European marketing professor.

E-Commerce

E-Commerce 2013 is a detailed text delving into the world of E-Commerce, in more detail and in a manner much different from all of the other social and mobile books discussed in this post.  While this book presents many cases and chapter information that intertwines with social and mobile, the book is devoted to E-Commerce with a progression through an intro section, the technology infrastructure, business concepts, and E-Commerce in action. The authors are Kenneth Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver.

The Microblogging Mindset

The Tao of Twitter is the best book I have found that steps a person through the beginning stages of learning to Tweet to advanced Twitter usage relevant to business goals and strategy. The author, Mark Schaefer, is the same author on this list for Return On Influence and Born to Blog.

Twitter Power also takes a humorous – and useful – look into Twitter. You know the book will have some fun content when you realize that the author, Joel Comm, was the inventor of the iFart app.

The Blogging Mindset

Born to Blog  walks the reader through the beginning stages – and struggles – people may have when blogging. It then progresses to tips and writing techniques needed to become a successful blogger, regardless of your industry. The book contains several personal experiences of the blogging challenges and triumphs that the authors, Mark Schaefer and Stanford Smith, have gone through.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive for the sake of maintaining brevity in a single blog post. There are many other excellent resources available; and in many other topic areas. What books have you found useful to navigate social and/or mobile media?

Dr. Todd Bacile (@toddbacile) is a Marketing Professor at Loyola University New Orleans and holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from Florida State University. He teaches Electronic Marketing and Advanced Marketing Strategy.  Social Media Marketing Magazine ranks him as one of the Top 100 Marketing Professors on Twitter. Have a question or comment? Post it here and you will receive a response.