When Chris Reimer set out to go to college at Marquette University, Google was just a number with 100 zeroes behind it, Mark Zuckerberg was 6-years-old, and Twitter was, quite simply, not a word at all. All he knew was business. Business was, for lack of a better word, the family trade. So, he sought a degree in Accounting and a job as a CPA.
It would be the job he did for 14 years, and for 14 years, it paid the bills. His job was boring to him, though. He felt stuck. He started making t-shirts in his basement. Then he started selling them. And he liked it. In his search for more sales, he found Twitter, an inexpensive platform through which he could reach potential customers. Now, it’s his full time job, and an a growing element of the trade in which he is leading the way.
“People have a developed distaste for being marketed to,” Reimer says of social media’s changing effects on an industry which had never been considered social. “Most people don’t even like TV ads. Companies feel as if they have lost the ability to market to people. But companies are finding that if they curate great social content, they find that it’s a great way to connect with customers.”
Just Like Math and Science
The introduction of social media into industries that had been virtually the same for decades, even with the digital revolution, is starting to demand innovators who have skills to carry these companies to the next phase. Erica Smith, now the social media editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, got into the journalism field as a designer in the beginning. In fact, when she first got involved with Twitter, she didn’t think of it as a resource for work at all. It wasn’t until she realized the news-aspect of the site that she started thinking of it as a tool that the St. Louis Post Dispatch could use.
“Without these skills, it would be a lot harder,” Smith said. “People are starting to realize that getting information out and finding information that’s useful is a lot easier. People are skeptic, but it would be much harder for us to do our job without it.”
As time progresses, and more and more companies begin utilizing social media, the training for these skills will become more important. The foundation for these skills is expected to be laid in stages, from lower grade levels to college. If a step is missed, the end result fails to come together in the right way. In many sectors of the job market, these skills are becoming as essential as math and science skills.
“It’s just like math and science,” Social Media Design program chair at Franklin University Daniel Bell said. “In college kids will learn more specialized skills in those subjects, but the foundation was laid before that. By learning social media skills early kids will better understand the way communication in industry is evolving.”
A Fundamental Change
The market for social media minded workers is growing. As hundreds of thousands of people register for accounts on social media sites every day, the economic power of social media is starting to emerge. Jobs that in the past never existed, like Smith’s and Reimer’s, are starting to become more crucial to all stages of business. More employers are looking for workers who come with social media proficiency as an inherent skill. While there are jobs now that are focused solely on social media management, many expect these to be phased out, and the expectation that employees simply have social media as a skill to take its place.
“Social media will part of things that everyone will do,” Smith said. “It will be assumed that people will take it on.”
Many universities around the area are taking note of this and tailoring curriculum to match this trend. Smith teaches a class focused on social media skills in various industries at Lindenwood University. Reimer travels around the area, and the nation, speaking about social media, and how it can fit into businesses as varied as t-shirt printing and marketing. Webster University, as well as St. Louis University, are implementing or have implemented programs that show students how social media skills can be applied to the jobs they will have in the future. Patrick Powers, a the Director of Social Media at Webster University believes that this is more than a skill; it’s a fundamental change.
“I just know it’s the way the world is choosing to communicate at this point in time,” Powers said. “At the base of it, these are just skills of communication.”
The world of business, the world of marketing, the world of journalism–quite simply: the world–has changed. Things are drastically different than they were 10 years ago. New skills are demanded of new employees, and the landscape doesn’t seem to be changing that anytime soon. For now, the best thing students can do is add the skill to their arsenal, and better prepare themselves to the changing job market.
“Using social media well will make anyone more attractive for jobs,” Reimer said. “I’m excited to see people use this stuff and use it well.”
