In my endeavor of establishing transparency and clarity in the, Ohh so amazing and new world of Social Media and Online Marketing, I am sure the series of posts I am doing now, will surely be an eye opener for clients.
Just sometime back, my strategy team did a search on the keywords, Social Media and India, and what we got were people who have sometime or the other in their professional lifetime, related to the Social Media industry. And since Social Media is not an age old concept, thus we started looking at the profiles of people who are currently into the profession.
To my UTTER AMAZE, the profiles, I was given were an absolute NO, if they were to handle my brand strategy not just on the internet but everywhere else. Interestingly, these people are recruited by not just the small Social Media ‘shops’ but the biggies in the business as well. Positioned highly, these guys are given fancy terms and well, the customer is sold!
Let me bring more clarity by looking at certain aspects of what my strategy team gave me, post the data analysis:
- Education
- Majority of these people have not done management (which I am not suggesting is necessary)
- 80% of them, do not have the words, Branding Consultant, Marketing, Positioning, Product life cycle, etc in their summary/ profiles
- Current
- The current profiles are all Social Media Strategist, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Executive
- Past
- There are people from BPO, from Technology, Adventure Tourism, Operations who are handling your So called Social Media Branding and Online Branding and Brand Creation and what not
- Experience
- Most of these people are fresh (1-3 years) of experience and are running the show
In my personal view, I completely agree that innovative thinking, creativity are needed, but is it that you will hand over your brand in the hands of someone who does NOT even understand what Brand stands for?!
This revelation by the team, surely opened my eyes towards how is the New Media industry being structured and shaping up. We are playing on chances and one of running successes.
