Those of us who are interested in working in Social Media Marketing might go searching various keywords on job boards online, including Community Manager, Communication Coordinator or Social Media Professional. However, I do not like these titles. I would like to see a new term being used to described these members of the marketing team.
The whole point of Social Media networks is for the participants to create content, engage and get into the 2 way nature of the communication. So do they want to be managed? I doubt it. I think most of us register on the various platforms because we want to have a conversation about something we are interested in and we want to find others who are interested in the same thing. We want to share information or our thoughts or experiences. Do we want some “Social Media Professional” poking their nose in and directing us to products or services they are trying to push? I do not think so.
Now this “Community Manager” or whatever, may be quite welcome if he or she is solving problems, answering questions and providing valuable customer service on their sites in which case there may be an argument for calling them by that handle.
However, I rather like to think that the person who works for the organization is also a person who just likes to talk about what they like and share information from the point of view of just another group member. So my vote for the most common professional title to use would be “Community Participant” or “Social Media Participant”. What do you think? Do you have another title that fits?
Social Kitty 