It wasn’t that long ago that I used to hear lots of stories about companies not knowing where their social media competence should ‘sit’ within an organization.  It used to be that a ‘Social Media’ person was someone who was going to deal with people ‘being difficult’ about the company online.  At best this person was a ‘community manager’ – at worse someone thrust into doing customer care on Twitter and Facebook.  So I guess we have moved on a bit since then.  This particular panel would suggest that some people have.

You, yourself on social media

The panel seemed unanimous in its opinion that having a strong personal presence on social media was important.  Indeed one panelist described the importance of being ‘personally branded.  This is, of course, much more than just ‘googling’ oneself and ensuring that nothing ‘dodgy’ comes up.  This is about looking good online – about looking like you know what social media means and how to create good marketing and branding.

The panelists mentioned LinkedIn quite a lot too.  Whereas some might say that LinkedIn falls into some kind of social media category for me if feels like a place where you just put your CV and add get some recommendations (in that ‘oh so internet -I’ll recommend you if you recommend me kind of way’ – like follow me follow you?).

Building an engaged Facebook or Twitter community is something quite different, of course, and a lot harder.

Original Content

How much content out there is original?, one panelist asked.  The point being made, of course, is that anyone can retweet someone else’s tweets and anyone can post others’ links on a Facebook fan page.

Those looking to hire Social Media folks are looking for people who can create original content.  Obviously someone who can create wholly original blog pieces (like this one!) is valuable but there are other, more subtle and less obvious aspects of originality.

Curate and comment

I know many people who follow people on Twitter or subscribe to their RSS feeds and shared items because those folks have a knack for finding and publishing stuff that others want to read.

Not only do they find and publish – curate (my current ‘mot juste’) – but they comment on their items.  And it’s this ‘adding opinion or a ‘slant’ that was identified by another panelist as another sought after skill when looking to recruit good people.

Wired

When listening to the discussion I was reminded of a Kevin Kelly talk from a few months ago where he described the Internet as ‘one big copying machine’.  Mr. Kelly described how, as we move forward, we will tend towards looking to pay for only that which cannot be copied.  ‘Immediacy’, ‘personalization’ and ‘authentication’ were some of the words – some of the attributes – he used to describe the currency of the future internet.

In parallel with this we should consider what will allow you to take part of another’s attention stream when it comes to grabbing their attention via social media.

So, when it comes to thinking about who might be involved in your social media efforts think what skills they might bring with them.

What competencies and value do they have that can’t be easily copied?