Social Media Misconceptions

By: Sarah Jones

Social media has flourished in the past 10 years and it has found its way into the workforce. Companies, schools, nonprofits, and even small businesses have people that work specifically in social media. For people who have been working in the industry awhile, this could be a difficult thing to grasp, which is why a lot of recent graduates are being hired as social media professionals. Since our generation grew up in a very technological world most of us already knew everything about social media before we got to college.

Now, I'm not to saying older generations can't learn. They certainly can and have. However, it seems there's a trend happening with young PR professionals; everyone wants to work in social media. In most of my classes we have to say what field we want to go into after graduation, and many people say they're dream job right out of college is social media.

Source via The Social Media Monthly

Social media for personal use is pretty straightforward and easy to grasp. However, it's different and more difficult when it comes to the business side of social media. I believe it's one of the misconceptions young PR professionals have. They think because they grew up with social media it will be a breeze doing it for a career. However, there's so much more that goes into it.

PR Daily featured an article where a social media manager explained what she did on a typical day at work. I found a few things interesting about what her job entails. One being that she actually never stops doing her job. Even though she knows they have after-hours support for the social media accounts, she still checks them as soon as she wakes up and numerous times throughout the evening. This particular day there was a national tragedy so she postponed all the scheduled posts she had planned for the day. So basically, she's always paying attention to what's going on in the world and planning accordingly for the company's social media accounts. She then has numerous meetings during the day about social media policies for the employees and upcoming campaigns. Something else that I thought was interesting was she mentioned how she is constantly taking pictures of the building and employees to add to its social media accounts.

Those wanting to work in social media have to be individuals that pay attention to everything going on around them, are able to multitask, and has an awesome memory that's able to remember the different terms of use for each social media platform. Being a social media manager is a 24/7 job, and the right person needs to be personable because they're communicating with audiences all day. A company's social media accounts are basically the face of the company so being in charge of the content on those platforms is more stressful than most people think it is. It's a huge responsibility and is a reason why colleges across the world are starting to have classes specifically for social media, as they should.