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By Thomas Rozof - (Revised & Expanded 3-3-09)

Over the last 5 years a slow but now certain trend has taken shape in the field of business organization and marketing. This new trend is making way for a new critical role and thus the largest new job opportunity in corporate America since the turn of the century. We predict it will quickly become the number one most needed position for any company dedicated to growth. Can you guess what it is?

Before we share the exact nature of this new employment opportunity let’s set the stage for how and why our research led us to this conclusion.

Most CEO’s and business leaders are aware that the world of traditional branding and marketing is changing.  They are also aware that one element at the heart of this change includes the fast emerging field of social media technology.  What they fail to realize is that they have little idea of the massive changes that are already in play, and coming much sooner than anyone imagined.

At SocialMediaScience.com we have documented this for some time with mountains of reliable evidence.  Here is how it’s taking place. As more and more people use social media tools, systems and processes to communicate, plan, and enhance their business and life, the more we are seeing this “social interaction” transform both the formal business networks and the informal social relationships that are attached to them.  Business and life are becoming one.

In this first report we’ll look at the two major areas where social media will have it greatest impact in the corporate setting. After this we will look at the why and how this social dynamic will forever change the business of business and why the new role of Social Media Consultant will be the most sought after skill in the corporate context for many years to come.

If companies large and small could comprehend the impact of this social force on their bottom line they would have hired this person already or began to train someone in house to assume this new and vital position.  Our research suggests that there are a few companies who are already ahead of the pack and acting as pioneers, very few, while others are almost totally in the dark. Let’s take a deeper look into the two areas where these social media skills will be needed most.

1. INTERNAL IMPACT:
The first impact of social media will be an internal organizational impact.  The corporate context has always been more about WHO you know than WHAT you know.  Many in these social settings are fond of lamenting the “Good Old Boy Network” that drives decisions from top to bottom. Over the last five years, however, something has happened that will transform this and every other “human business network” of its kind. But here’s the twist: Instead of obliterating these once detested “In Crowds,” we are expanding them and opening them up for more people to participate in the discussion, thus destroying much of their power for evil and enhancing their capacity for good.

Yes, social media and social skills in general will be used to transform the way a business community functions internally, within itself.  Why? Because we have long known that the effectiveness of a business to produce profits is almost always a direct by-product of a healthy internal business community.  We are not here just talking about “getting along” but about being emotionally and mentally invested in the company vision and in the products and services tied to this vision.

Jim Collins in his landmark book, Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap And Others Don’t, documents the kinds of companies who are able to execute the transition from adequate, to good, to great. When you catalog his findings you quickly see that the WAY a company operates internally, from top to bottom, is a key factor in determining both productivity and quality.

Every day evidence mounts to support the need for companies to transform the way they operate internally. For the most part this is no longer even a matter for debate. Too much social evidence has already accumulated on this subject. Therefore the next step is one of implementation.

Believe me when I say that many people will resists this process in the same way that many will whole heatedly embrace these internal social changes. As with all other professional consultants, the Professional Social Media Consultants who are called in to assist with this task must develop a proven track record before they will be welcomed in mass. If this conjures up images of the old style psychological applications like Transactional Analysis you have missed the concept completely. No, these new internal behaviors will be guided and forged by the application of new communication tools and objective social processes all aimed at something much larger than just helping people feel good about their current level of powerlessness and disenfranchisement.

Good social media consultants will stay away from any attempt to impose their understanding of what comprises perfect company relationships. Their goal is solely to put into place the social media channels and systems that will allow the corporate community itself to communicate, reward, suggest, ask questions, offer solutions, raise issues, list complaints, and other engagements designed to produce a company united in vision and purpose.  At the heart of the consultants regimen will be the goal of empowering every worker’s “company self image” so that he or she is mentally and emotionally invested in the business at hand. To accomplish this the consultant will institute things like:

1. Regular online internal business forums.

2. Impromptu surveys to solve problems and gain consensus.

3. Online town hall meetings with the CEO or President of the company.

4. Idea pools that are read and taken seriously by those in charge.

5. Reward systems that allow fellow employees to advance in stature and  position based on community recognition and accomplishments.

6. Access to the CEO’s email address.

7. CEO’s who begin blogging and writing specifically to company workers.

8. Photos of new employees that are randomly assigned to eat lunch with a new person in their department each week.

9. And several other effective social processes…

The list goes on and these are only suggestive enough to give you an idea of how social media mechanisms might soon impact more companies, not just in the U.S., but around the globe.

The Japanese car manufacturers have long functioned with a much higher degree of internal community than their USA counterparts. It is cited as one of the top reasons for both their productivity and quality.  We in the West have tried for decades to learn from Japan so that we too could produce cars that would rank just as high in consumer satisfaction reports. Unfortunately we learned everything we could about how they applied modern machinery and unique assembly line techniques to the car making process, but little about how they formed and developed the intrinsic “spirit” of the company itself.

This is what we are missing in our companies today. Most have no true company spirit. In addition to qualified and experienced social media consultants we will need courageous leaders who are not afraid of being transparent, open, and who will adopt these new methods because he or she knows they are indeed good for DISCOVERING the spirit of their company. Therefore, these new social consultants are more needed than ever to help us realize our American business potential.

Although our public school systems are not 100% comparable to a CEO led company, there are enough similarities that I felt the story of Mark Gross could be illustrative. He’s the teacher who developed School Loop, which he defines as, “a collaborative system that helps teachers, parents and students share information without strain or pain.” Mark is a former ninth grade teacher who had a long standing dream.  In this own words again he says, “I had a dream of knowing my students personally, of earning their trust, of basing my work on their individual needs, of providing immediate feedback and encouragement, of connecting with their families and of working with my peers to help them.” Mark sees School Loop as the application of social media tools to an area of pressing human need. He’s right.

Personally, I think this is exactly what is needed in corporations as well. When you consider that the modern day company is, in many ways, the outgrowth and manifestation of our institutions of high learning, then perhaps we could agree that all businesses need their own Company Loop to reach their fullest potential.

Whole books will soon be written on this one aspect of applying social media to promote stellar corporate formation.  In the meantime we are here to either warn you or rejoice with you depending on how you view this inevitable social dynamic.

2. EXTERNAL IMPACT:
The second, and even more challenging role of the Social Media Consultant will be external, in the field of branding and marketing. What we are witnessing is the utilization of every form of communications technology to enhance our social connections with one another. This is not just an Internet phenomenon.  It involves ALL forms of audio-visual communications, radio, TV, and especially telecommunications. The increase in SMS text messaging is not happening just among youth.  The dynamics that are part of the computer based Internet world are exploding outwards and attaching themselves to every field of communications.

At Social Media Science we have long predicted a rather catastrophic outcome with regard to the impact of social media on the business world in general. It is a fact that companies who do not comply, adapt, and learn how to leverage these new social dynamics will no longer exist within the next 10 years, mainly because they will be replaced by those who do. It’s that simple and it’s that final.

Slowly the whole world is becoming our neighborhood and our neighbors are no longer limited by time or space. The impact of this on the traditional Fortune 1000 company is so immense that it’s created a mad rush to both understand and to somehow benefit form this new global metamorphosis.

We now know almost exactly how this new world order will emerge. Since space does not permit a complete review let’s consider just one major way this will unfold. Currently we have found that between 70% and 80% of all people who seek advice for the purchase of a product count the opinions of friends and other non professionals to be more important than any other form of advice, even that of a recognized expert.  This trend had continued to increase slowly over the last five years. Why do you suppose it’s increasing? We suspect that it’s because gradually over time these “shoppers” discover that those closest to them and those with little or no financial incentives are the ones who give the most honest and accurate recommendations.

Guess what? These kinds of communities are growing…a better word is proliferating, spreading like a dandelion shedding thousands of seeds into the air soon to embed themselves in another location…on and on. Now look into the future with us. Each year form here on out these “authentication communities” will multiply. Soon we expect to see things like: “Coppertone Sunscreen, voted number one by the Twitter community.” Now consider all the 5,000 plus social communities on the horizon, each focused on their own little segment of the world, and each capable of empowering millions and eventually billions in sales over their lifetime. If I owned a traditional company I would be planning TODAY to position my products or service so that they meet the exact needs of a select number of social networks.

Now think of all the businesses that support the current marketing world. As these “authentication communities” render the traditional branding process more and more useless we will see writers, graphic artists, printers, sales forces, public relations agents, and others attached to this industry less and less needed. Believe us…the die is cast.

This new reality has created, almost overnight, the need for more experts in the field of social media marketing.  Although it may seem obvious that these unprecedented social communication networks need to be mastered and harnessed to unearth their meaning and potential…it’s not that easy.  For one thing, the level of confusion, disagreement and flat out inaccuracies are making it hard for business leaders to hire “experts” in this field.

Here’s what we predict will happen. Over the next several years traditional online marketing companies that now focus on SEO, PayPerClick and other proven online marketing strategies will (and many already have) develop a segment of their business that develops social media marketing campaigns for companies who can afford them. However, in recent studies conducted by Marketing Sherpa and Marketing Experiments there is a VERY uneven and often contradictory approach that these companies use to provide social marketing solutions. What this means is that social media marketing right now is more of an art than a science. The science is unfolding and will eventually be verified, but in the meantime: Buyer Beware.

As we have researched this new field of study and tracked the philosophies and tactics of those purporting to be experts we have found a vast level of pure ignorance on the one hand and genius on the other.  For one thing, there is a wide variety of ways to tap into the social media space.  There’s also just as many ways to gather, channel and utilize social traffic.

For example let’s look at some of the challenges associated with the task of becoming a Social Media Marketing Consultant:

1. Although sites like YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, eBay and LinkedIn are in the news often, did you know that currently we have cataloged over 5300 social media web sites that are large enough to catch the attention of the search engines? We know there are hundreds and perhaps thousands more that are destined to either be discovered and grow, or fade into the background and die. It is a full time job just monitoring the existing and newly forming networks, anyone of which could become the next huge source of online traffic.

2. All of these social media sites must be cataloged and segmented. In our lab we have already identified close to 50 ways to filter and dissect the focus and content contained in each site. These results will certainly grow, change and even morph into more segments.  Like traditional data segmentation these sites can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways, and should be, and even more so if social media takes on the place in marketing that we predict.

3. Social media comes in many forms. Each of these expressions tell us something about the specific needs they were designed to meet. These needs will likewise inform us about the kinds of customers that use these sites. All of this information is critical when creating a custom social marketing blueprint for business applications. You quickly see some of these differences in the Social Media Types List below:

• SOCIAL NETWORKING: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn

• SOCIAL NEWS: ReadIt, Propeller, Fark,

• WIKIS: Wikipedia

• SOCIAL BOOKMARKING: Digg, Delicious

• BLOGS: Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad,

• VIDEO SHARING: YouTube, Hulu

• PHOTOSHARING: Flickr, Photobucket

• PRESENTATION SHARING: Slideshare.net, Issuu, Scribd,

• And Another 15 PLUS TYPES Of Social Media Expressions

4. What many SEO and online marketing companies have yet to digest is that the evidence increasingly suggests that social media is destined to change every facet of their business and even put an end to some aspects of their marketing menu.  What we predict is that social media will be the foundation and starting point for All online marketing. How a company adjusts to these facts now is just as important as what they do with social media specifically.

5. If you examine the many ways that business professionals have attempted to use social media to further their goals you find a dizzying array of methods, most of which, unfortunately, have not succeeded in the ways they expected. This has led to confusion and competing methods that often work at cross purposes. It is only through extensive testing and research that order and clarity will arrive in this field.

This list is suggestive only, as it represents the most obvious challenges, but it’s in no way exhaustive.  These challenges are all part of the new job description for this very unique and important emerging role in the business community. Just as in the early days when other forms of online marketing were being discovered, we believe that a very similar sorting out process will take place as the market identifies the best and brightest of this new breed of social marketing experts.

IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: As with any form of marketing, companies will support it only so long as it works and produces an obvious benefit in the form of profits.

To accomplish this the new experts are going to need at least five
things:

1. They will need intense hands on training conducted by people who can verify their results from objective testing and research and who have a long string of successful campaigns under their belt.

2. Their training must be more than theory and concepts. They must learn how to conduct campaigns from start to finish and produce results.

3. They need software tools that will automate and empower their efforts, knowing that both speed and increased effectiveness will set them apart from what will soon become a very competitive market. In fact, we predict that SOFTWARE will play an extremely critical role for any company or person who takes on this challenge/opportunity.

4. They must know how to design campaigns that meet the unique needs of their clients, knowing that no one method will produce the same results for all. CUSTOMIZATION will therefore be a hallmark of this industry.

5. They must have ongoing support so that they have someone to consult with when they encounter difficulties or are met with a challenging circumstance. We see a few top social media GENIUSES emerging who will in turn begin training schools with certification programs for their students as a way of disseminating their tested and proven methods.

Perhaps by now you have begun to understand both the benefits and the challenges associated with the role of the Social Media Consultant. What I have covered above is truly a cursory overview. Anyone interested in seeking this position would be well served to read some of the many books springing forth on the subject and to dig into the social media world first hand. If after this you find you are drawn to this new vocation the next stop is to enter some form of training program designed to equip social media students.

I’d like to close on a very positive note. Those who do not resist social media but embrace it’s inevitable consequences will be the winners…and there will be LOTS of them…LOTS. We are at the very beginning of a new social order that has never existed since the beginning of time. Heroes will emerge, billions will be made, new companies will blossom that will look nothing like the corporations of the past, and best of all EVERY small company will stand a genuine chance of making it big…IF they fully embrace this amazing new organizational and marketing medium.

If you would like more information about our social media technologies, our training programs, or desire a custom campaign for your business, please look us up at: SocialMediaScience.com or call Tom or Charles at 316-640-0486 or 316-684-1466.

Thomas Rozof, tom@SocialMediaScience.com