Two interesting posts from Mashable over the last few days have me thinking (again) about the evolution of communication, and the fact that many people seem to forget the lessons of the past as we all look to the future. First up, a post examining the future of social media, at least from a "is there a job market" standpoint. Ben Parr notes that he believes the social media jobs are here to stay, posting:
Even if the title changes, the role of the social media marketer or manager is not going anywhere. Building community, reaching out to potential customers, building stronger relationships, creating buzz - they are fundamental goals to every company. So long as people use social media to share their thoughts and their complaints, the need for people to fill social media jobs will continue to grow.
And the companies that fill those roles now will be ahead of the game.
Valleywag had a pretty (as usual) snarky response:
Here's a more realistic conclusion: Social media technologies are new IT tools for the same old roles. Parr and his fans desperately want to believe Corporate America will soon create entire new divisions of social media jobs just for them. They'll be their own special-forces arm of the company, with a Chief Social Media Officer reporting directly to the CEO. Any day now!
Yes, big corporations will adopt social media to stay in touch with customers. But they'll do it by giving social media tools to existing parts of the organization: Customer support. Marketing. Public relations. And contrary to Parr's thin-air claims, I'm guessing that in a downturn, the guy who spends all day on Twitter will be first to go.
Surprisingly, I find myself much more in agreement with Valleywag, and the past certainly appears to bear them (and me) out. There is no longer a real job market for desktop publishing, it's all part of publishing. There's no huge job market for digital photography, it's all about photography, with digital being a tactic or choice. Companies aren't really hiring bloggers, they are using blogging as one of many communications tools. And so it will be with social media generally -- it will rapidly move up the communications ladder and simply be yet another way companies and individuals communicate with various audiences.
Then yesterday Mark Hopkins wrote about The Changing Role of Public Relations. His takeaway is that a prime role for new PR is to be a connector, as he says:
I think I have the answer, or at least observations from my recent interactions with PR folks. They’re serving as connectors to the businesses that employ them, it seems, as well as to the journalists they use to propagate their message. Instead of being sent press releases by public relations folks, I’m receiving friendly emails and phone calls letting me know about upcoming interesting tidbits of news, and increasingly I’m striking up conversations of a friendly nature that often have very little to do with what sort new thing their client may be doing.
All good there, but the fly in the ointment is that what he is describing has long been something that good PR firms and good internal PR people do -- it's not new, it's not evolutionary and it doesn't really represent a change in the role of public relations. At its core, PR continues to be about helping find or create great stories, translating those stories into the language that the right audience can understand, using the best tools to reach those audiences, listening the to feedback and echoes the stories create and engaging in the appropriate way. Oh, and yes, sometimes PR means being a gatekeeper. It's not the most fun part of the job, but sometimes it's a necessary one.