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Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst with digital strategy consulting firm Altimeter Group, interviewed 140 enterprise-class social strategists for a report on the “Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist” that hit the web last November. The report found that most interviewees believe that the social strategist role will “fade into the background as social technologies become a ubiquitous communication channel among consumers and companies.”
Interviewees pointed toward three ultimate paths for the social strategist role and those currently filling the position:
- Ultimate cross-functional integration, spanning all areas of the business,
- Extinction of the role, as more business units adopt social technologies and social strategists move on to other emerging technologies, and
- Ascension to executive roles that focus on customer experience.
Inspired by conversation around these findings, we asked our community to share their thoughts, via Quora, Twitter and good ol’ e-mail, on the future of the social strategist role. Below are some of the most interesting thoughts from the discussion. Please add your own thoughts on the Quora thread or in the comments below.
Cross-Functional Integration
Edelman Digital’s SVP, Director of Insights Steve Rubel believes that using social technologies will be the norm across business disciplines in the future.
More than 70% of social media programs are housed under marketing and communications, according to the Altimeter Group report and other similar studies and reports. All signs, though, point to greater integration of social media across organizations.
As more people throughout organizations begin using social technologies, they will become a part of the tool belt that employees use for interacting with consumers and other stakeholders, not just a task housed within marketing departments. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from Quora responses that elaborate on this prediction:
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“I think it could be a relatively short lived career path. Social media is a tool that can and should be used (in different ways) by virtually all job disciplines/careers. As people become more comfortable with using social media (figuring out what does and doesn’t work), they won’t need the hand holding anymore… What AOL was for the Internet, social media strategists are for social media…”
– Jack Benoff, director of marketing strategy, Zugara
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“As social media becomes embedded across the fabric of companies, [I] think you end up having a proliferation of social media strategists who use social media as a tool to do their job and do it better every day.”
– Richard Binhammer, senior manager, Dell
– Scott Gulbransen, director of social media and digital content, Applebee’s
– Stuart Tracte, freelance digital and social strategist
The consensus seems to be that the social strategist role will be integrated at the very least into a broader outward-facing community role, whether that be from the marketing point of view or from various perspectives across organizations.
Becoming Obsolete and Moving On
It seems inevitable that many of the people working in the social strategy space will be out of jobs in just a few years, especially those at smaller organizations that will be able to incorporate social media across business units more quickly than huge enterprises. As corporate adoption of social technologies spreads, the need for a social strategist will be something of the past.
Here are some thoughts from the front lines on the decline of the social media strategist and what’s next:
“We will be disappearing. All strategy, whether that is TV, print, etc., will be handled by the ad execs and executed by PR company internals. The need for independent social media strategists is only a reaction to technology moving faster than the current creatives. It is all going to blend together in the end… and I encourage social media strategists to embed themselves with overall corporate messaging to help expand their roles for the future.”
– Marcy Mcclelland-Massura, digital media community manager, Weber Shandwick
“As social media becomes more integrated into day-to-day business operations, social media strategists may evolve into broader communication strategists, perhaps with a special emphasis on technology. There will always be new trends and new tools to follow, so these people won’t become obsolete — as long as they understand how to evolve to keep up with the changing business needs.”
– Heather Whaling, president, Geben Communication
“The perfect social media is a quarterback, driving a strategy that leads to real business value, not popularity chasing with limited to no value. That position — the internal strategist that aligns various business units — will continue to be around, but only necessary at big corporations. The small companies and startups have no need for those people now, and will begin to see that there’s no need for them in the future.”
– Jeremy Pepper, public relations consultant
“In 2007 social media meant Facebook. Today, we’ve got smartphones, location-based services, social games, social video, apps, blogs, and we have people with roles like ‘director of mobile strategy.’ Specialized roles like that need to exist because the rate of change within each category is (or will be) too much for any one person to keep track of. That’s not to say that the role of social media strategist is going to go away anytime soon. It’s going to take a long time for most of the big corporations that currently exist to become comfortable with social media, not to mention build out an entire department to handle it. But you can be sure of the fact that they’re going to hire a social media strategist before they even think about hiring a director of location-based strategy.”
– Mattan Griffel, marketing coordinator, appsavvy
“The job descriptions social media manager/strategist/consultant and so on are used because the social media is still new to the majority of all businesses. I believe that after this paradigm shift we will have new media/technology manager/strategist/consultant whose role will be to hunt trends, test and join new things, and adapt this to their company or customer at the right time.”
– Beate V. Kittelsen, social media manager, Eniro
“The social media strategist is like Neo from the Matrix. He’s able to look at tons of mentions on his monitoring dashboard of choice like green data cascading down the screen. Learning the newest app requires immediate comprehension like learning kung fu or flying a helicopter. But ultimately, Neo, like the social media strategist, will lead the people to Zion where he’ll have to be sacrificed so the business can live.”
– Rick Bakas, advisor, Bakas Media
As social strategist positions are made obsolete, people who once filled those roles will dive into the next wave of innovated technologies, taking on strategist work in those areas.
Climbing Up the Corporate Ladder
Whether an executive-level social media role is here to stay or not, it’s plausible to speculate that the cream of the crop of today’s social strategists will find themselves catapulted to executive positions in the next five years. As Oywang’s Altimeter Group report stated, “In the coming years, Social Strategists will prove their multi-functional, cross-disciplinary, and customer-centric mettle. As their role becomes obsolete, they will be well positioned to assume new roles as executives focused on customer experience — spanning awareness, purchase, support and innovation of new products.”
From the discussion on Quora, there seem to be two main trajectories. In one case, an executive-level role that focuses on cross-functional social strategy is created, as described here by Mario Sundar, senior social media manager and chief blogger at LinkedIn:
“In large organizations, the need for an executive-level social media strategist who defines the role across different functional areas will become the norm… Kind of like what my good friends Frank Eliason (formerly at Comcast and currently SVP of Social for Citigroup) and Scott Monty (head of social media at Ford) do at their respective large organizations. Their cross-functional role helps define social media across the organization as it’s integrated more closely with all functional areas, projects, etc.
“This will become the career trajectory for social media expertise in much the same way a marketing manager evolves into a VP of marketing.”
In the other case, all executives must weave social technologies into their strategies. In this instance, strategists with experience in applying social to key business areas, such as marketing, human resources or finance, may have an advantage over others in the job market, enabling them to take on key leadership roles, explained Ryan Kuder, VP of marketing at Bizzy:
“The role of social media strategist will disappear as leaders in all organizations assume responsibility for new social business paradigms. The focus will shift from social media, which is generally used in reference to the tool set, and will focus more on social technologies, which include all ways that companies leverage the relationships that they have with customers and potential customers.
“If I was a social strategist today, I’d start focusing on a discipline like marketing or HR or PR or support. Understanding how social technologies impact a business will become a required skill set for managing an organization so today’s social media strategists (or the good ones at least) will be tomorrow’s organizational leaders.”
Social Media Educators Needed
Kristen Sosulski, assistant professor of emerging media at New York University, touched on social media education when asked about the future of the strategist role.
Social media education was one area that wasn’t touched on in Altimeter Group’s report, but that came up in conversations within the Mashable community.
In the past year, I have personally seen many of my co-workers and friends within the social space take on part-time teaching positions at top universities, teaching courses on emerging media.
It may be a stretch to say that today’s social media strategists are tomorrow’s social media educators, but with so many people lacking experience using social technologies, there is a lot of training to be had. Social strategists are taking on these positions as side gigs and the opportunities seem to be increasing, as universities and corporations need to keep up with innovations.
Add your thoughts, in the comments below or within the Quora discussion, on the future of the social media strategist role.
Series Supported by StrongMail
The Social Media Strategist Series is supported by StrongMail, which helps marketers forge meaningful, profitable and long-lasting connections with customers through e-mail marketing and social media. Its unique combination of technology and services offer distinct advantages, including easy access to customer data, low cost of ownership and groundbreaking strategic and creative services.
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