Around mid-decade we went through a phase where corporations and agencies considered creating jobs such as “Manager, Blogger Relations”. Â To this day that makes a lot of sense if you happen to work for a company that provides blog software, blog design, blog hosting, blog monitoring. For other kinds of companies, not so much. Because for other types of companies, blogs are just another communications vehicle. So are microblogs, like Twitter.
Chances are good that your company needs deep expertise in social media. Fill that need. Position yourself as the lead on the tech or the techniques. That’s a good thing to do.
But don’t let your expert role turn into a marketing silo. Social media specialization is a skill set — and a hot one — but that’s all it is.
Many C-level executives are deciding they can’t afford the luxury of marketing professionals with limited expertise, no matter how hot. They know that’s not the way markets operate. People touch companies through multiple channels — broadcast media, digital media, store visits, review sites, picking up the phone, writing an email, reading a newsletter and most importantly, through everyday casual 1-on-1 conversations taking place offline with people they know and trust. Blogs and Twitter alone won’t cut it — even Comcast’s Frank Eliason says so.
So get out there and bring your company into the 21st century. Just don’t let anyone stuff you into a marketing silo along the way.
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Duncan raises some good points about the evolution of blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). Blogging is becoming the online publishing platform of choice in many industries, from politics to pharma. This has a couple of implications for influencer programs in 2009.
Top of my list, is that 2009 should see the end of consternation over classifying influencers as “bloggers” or in terms of their other roles in a market or community, be it their job title, employer, profession or expertise.
The crossover point started to become clear in mainstream tech media relations when you could no longer distinguish between columnists and bloggers at ZDNet and other top-10 media networks.
In analyst relations, Gartner brought the point home a few months ago with the launch of the Gartner Blog Network. Trust me, no one is dithering over whether to reclassify Gartner employees from analysts to bloggers.
Sure, some people will be best classified as “bloggers”, just as we still have syndicated columnists from the hardcopy print days. In general though, the confusion over doctor-lawyer-blogger man-thief should die down.
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