Businessweek has an article out about social media directors and their uses in corporate social media.  It's a funny, but accurate opening.

Across the country, companies like Petco are going through a two-step process. First, they scramble to hire social media officers. Second, they figure out what it is, exactly, that social media officers do. Blending departments—promotion and marketing, customer service and support—and requiring the ability to be shameless boosters while maintaining a light, self-aware tone, the job category is experiencing a boomlet as companies try to keep up with the new media world. The chief social media officer may be supplanting the chief branding officer as the zaniest human resource innovation in memory.

At issue is the question of what a social media employee does - where to put them, what to pay them, and how to judge their success.  It's a complicated field, because social media touches just about every area of the enterprise.  Felix Gillette, the writer, does a good job of discussing the problem but also chronicling what needs to be done about it.

My contribution comes on page 3, where they discuss salaries.  

Jim Durbin, the creator of socialmediaheadhunter.com, says experienced social media directors—business strategists capable of identifying a company's needs and solving them using social media tools—can command $120,000 a year and up. Further down the ladder are community managers, who oversee a company's day-to-day social media operations and earn $60,000 to $80,000. Below them are cub Twitter managers, essentially copywriters with little business experience, who typically earn $30,000 to $50,000.

The salaries vary wildly, but they are settling down in the sense that the need for social media has been established, but the experience behind it is still lacking.  It's hard to make social media work, because you're essentially a dozen different jobs and skillsets running up against company processes that more often than not will beat you back.  Thus the key to a higher salary, is learning how to navigate a company's social and political structure.

Regularly people are asking me if I can get them a job in social media.  While I do have a site for that - jobsinsocialmedia.com, the answer is almost always no.  No company wants to pay for an unproven employee, and the people I do place have experience in their fields, but have shown some success in social media to complement it.

This a manager, a recruiter, a salesperson, and a marketer can and have been placed by me, but because they spoke the language of business, not of Facebook.  Well they spoke the language of Facebook too, but not as well as they speak the language of value. 

Of final note is the battle between social media skillset and social media job seems to be over.  The skillset won out, but those people are now demanding the job title.   That's funny.

Social media as a job function is on the rise - Indeed.com shows over 1000 open positions posted to job boards with the word "social media" in the title, and over 21,000 jobs using the words "social media" somewhere in the job description.  Compare this with an established technical position like "java developer," which rings in at over 48,000 positions.  I'm inundated with people who want to "break" into social media, or who want an entry-level position to learn the ropes. 

But what does it mean to be in social media?  The growth of the sector seems explosive from the outside, but I believe we haven't seen anything yet.  Companies still don't understand how to add social media to their divisions and to their initiatives.  Right now, you have islands inside companies run by one or at best a small group of people who get "it," or you have a national strategy for huge corporations that just scrapes the potential of what could be achieved. 

So what does a guy who doesn't even have any recent blog posts know about this?  Well - I do still speak with social media types on a regular basis during searches, and the blog is dormant because we just came off our busiest year ever.  And while everything I offer is anecdotal and not backed by hard research, the trendlines are all the same.  Social media as a business phenomenon is petering out (seriously - how many of you are landing large dollar accounts with social media projects?  Not many - the growth is all in applications), but social media as a magnifying force inside existing divisions is set to explode.  

Off the top of my head, I can think of amazing, million dollar (in monthly savings) programs in customer care, recruiting, event promotion and planning, television and magazine spend, and direct mail and catalog uses that take social media by the horns and bend it to their will. 

This isn't the community evangelism that so many people were pitching a couple of years ago - this is utilizing existing infrastructure to create value in a way that is authentic, results-based, and easy to measure using the same metrics you apply to your current systems. 

The post has already gone far from where I intended it to.  I was going to address low-level social media jobs that companies could add in the transition from traditional marketing to integrated marketing, but that will be saved for another post. 

What I'm trying to say is that social media as a separate discipline was always a fools errand.  Social media embedded into all of your publishing systems is where we're headed.  If you want to get ahead of the curve, start thinking about how social media can be applied to your job, right now.  Don't seek out a position - seek out a way to use social media to do your job better, and the results will be what you wanted all along - a more interesting position without the inherent risk and low salary of breaking into a new field.

I'm here at Social Fresh St Louis, both to learn and to network.  While I won't be making any pitches while here, I'm always looking both for candidates and for positions.  If you're looking to hire someone to execute the plans you learned about here at Social Fresh St Louis, I'm your guy.  Just follow at @smheadhunter.

I'm wearing a gray jacket and a white shirt - 6'1" with dark hair.  Come say hello.

If you're a candidate, you can always submit your resume to our database.  That and follow. 

Okay - that title isn't my idea, rather a client who is tired of hearing the words"social media."  It's not that he doesn't believe in the power of social, it's that he believes we have reached a point where social is the new normal.

Public Relations, Marketing, Customer Service, Recruiting and Sales should be using social media as part of their skillsets, and not counting on someone to do the work individually.  I agree, which is why in the last year I've done a lot more integrated marketing than social media marketing.

One, it sells better.  Two, it allows me to filter with more ease.  Hiring experience in an industry is always easier than hiring a skillset.  Three, it keeps the salaries high, as they are based on previous salaries, and not some amorphous range that differs at each company.

Of course, I agree with the sentiment because I've always practiced it.  It might be strange for the social media headhunter to say such things, but the terms applies as much to my methods as my placements. 

So this year - let's all agree that we'll say integrated marketing or integrated communications instead of social media.  And remember, "engagement" and "transparency" are right out.  They might be benefits, but no company pays for them anymore.

I admit it.  Google's Sitewiki and Facebook's new search features scare me.  If they become fully realized, I'll be busier than a one-armed paper hanger in a, well - I'll be busy.  And yet, that work is far off enough that it doesn't feel that pressing.  Surely we'll have time to catch up? No.  If you fall behind in the next two years, it's going to be very difficult to catch up, because internal alignment with social media is the new holy grail, and that always takes time.

What's funny is I've been preaching the gospel of integrated marketing, but social media headhunting is still heating up for community management and copywriting.  As you can imagine, a lot of people contact me hoping to break into the social media field.  I am terribly sorry, but I simply don't have time to reach out to all of you, and to be honest, there's not much I can do for you.  You don't break into the field.  You can create the position internally, but work as an intern or leaving your job to consult is not a good choice.  Your best efforts come from inside a company.  If you're taking a position, you're going to need enough authority to make decisions and make changes.  Listening and responding gets real frustrating when you can't actually help the people who are responding.

So while my little section of the job market is heating up, I still see the long-term value in being in a established position and using social media to make you more productive.  Facebook skills are great, but do they bring in more money than PPC? And what lessons can we take from PPC on how to improve your Facebook traffic?  That question is one everyone should be able to answer, and yet, I don't see much written (of course, it could be because no one wants to share their secrets). 

So in terms of skills, I'd say this - stay with your company and look for ways to effect change using social media in your current position. If you want to make a change, use social media to learn a new industry that you can port your skills over to, but don't count on online writing and responding to be your holy grail.

It doesn't pay that well.

As you might imagine, I get a lot of inquiries from folks seeking and offered social media positions.  An interesting question that has popped up lately - will taking a social media job hurt me in my career?  At first glance, this seems laughable.  Social media is cutting edge, it's hot for the media, and everyone wants in.

But what if social media is a career dead end?  I'm not suggesting social media is a fad - it's clearly part of a broader trend towards transparency, connectedness, and personal publishing.  And yet the long term social trends have little to do with the actual positions being offered.

Community manager, social media specialist (entry level), and even social media consultant are fun titles that keep you learning and connect you to a bunch of other social media types, but if you need to make a career transition, will your skills in social media transfer?  Will they get you raises? Promotions? Will someone who graduates college and takes a job in social media eventually make it to the C-Suite?

My experience is pretty relevant here.  The people I place aren't top level strategists.  Mostly I work on two kinds of positions - social media doers in the 50K-80K range, and sales, marketing, PR and technology professionals with a good background who made some inroads into social media in their current position.  A social media doer is not a position with career advancement. It's the person who executes the strategy and serves as the face of social media, but I'm always very clear this is not a stepping stone, it's position set in stone.  Lots of people want to do strategy, but few want to lay the groundwork down and get in the trenches.  I hire trenchworkers. And I hire trenchworkers with a background in marketing or PR.  It's hard to imagine a company coming to me to find a social media anything who didn't have current experience in their industry.

Which brings us back to that question.  Is social media a career risk? 

These would be my three top concerns.

1) This is a temporary position with no way to measure success.  A lot of companies are hiring people to test the social media waters, or tasking internal employees to handle the social media duties.  Far too many of these people think time invested is invested time.  If you can't talk about what you learned, and how it applies to your career, you may be in a temporary position.

2) Social Media lends itself to fluff.  If you've spoken with me, you know I mock "engagement" and "transparency" on a regular basis.  I believe in those values, but I also believe that no company is going to pay you for some engagement metric.  Those involved in that fruitless search are going to be dissatisfied, or they're going to be selling snake oil.  Engagement is an intangible benefit of social media, but companies pay for tangible benefits.  If your job is leaving comments and interacting with people on Facebook, your job just isn't that important.  Make sure you're actively engaged in solving business problems if you want to avoid this trap.  Find out how your efforts make or save money, and you'll be in good spirits.  Simply being the social media person in a company that wants to "engage" customers is a dead-end.

3) Don't get trapped on an island. One of the best benefits in social media is the networking, both in and outside of the company.  A good social media person is not a standalone division, but an integrated part of their division.  Connect all of the disparate contact points in a company (recruiting, sales, marketing, customer service, tech support, corporate communications, event planning, philanthropy) and make each one of them aware of company strengths.  Be a good networker, and you may find yourself eventually as a power broker. 

Ultimately your goal is simple.  Companies like employees that get things done.  That skill is in short supply.  If you can leverage yourself into a position where you are an effective manager of resources and a go-to person for information, then the position you hold is not as important as your value to the company.  When being recruited, look for opportunities to make decisions and hold responsibility (especially for budgets and personnel).  The career risk lies in taking a job where you don't see the future, not the position itself.

You know me and short job descriptions.  I need someone to be a social media consultant for a company. The position starts off as consulting gig, but if you do a good job, they will want you to go full time in six months.  I have a fixed rate and salary in mind.

The position is remote, but you'll have a cubicle.  It's working for a nursing provider here in St Louis, helping brand and promote the recruiting department.  The job is not posted, and it's my job to bring a slate of candidates to them (it's retained). 

What you'll do

You'll blog (regularly, and on multiple sites).

You'll monitor the online world for information on the company

You'll look for and post events in other cities.

You'll help the recruiter be the face of the company's employment, but will not be a ghostwriter.

You'll make it so the recruiter and the company are well-known in the geographical area, which means working with them to create a style of writing that agrees with both of you. 

You'll report on results. 

What I need from you.

1) Experience writing consistently in the online world

2) Experience interviewing (reporters and recruiters welcome)

3) Self-disciplined (as in examples, not, "I'm really discipline."

4) Curiousity

5) Functional use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning social networks, Google, and blogging platforms (this is typepad, but you don't need it)

6) Some background in recruiting is great, but not necessary.  Same is true for PR.

7) A desire to utilize social media for results, and not "engagement" or "conversation."  It's a metrics based world.

I can train some of what you don't know, but I'm only training the one who gets the job.  If interested, contact me at socialmediaheadhunter at the google email or using smheadhunter as a headhunter on a number of sites.