I wrote a post awhile back that denounced the phrase 'social media expert'. Frankly, I think it's impossible to be a social media expert, seeing as our industry moves so quickly.
During the course of one day, I can be happily inundated with several hundred blog posts that aid in continuing my knowledge of the social media industry. I am continuously learning and as such do not believe I will ever 'know everything' in my industry, making the title 'expert' an impossibility.
However, there has been a recent trend indicating 'social media verticalization,' or, the practice of specializing in a particular element of social media.
I don't disagree with this model of specialization for social media marketers. In fact, differentiation may be the best way to accomplish the individual goals for your clients.
My only concern arises for Corporate PR campaigns. The creation of specialization silos for social media further segments corporate SM efforts and makes these efforts more disperse. I believe the most powerful way to reach constituencies is by creating integrated marketing communication (IMC) campaigns that are inherently integrated across platforms and illustrates use of consistent messages.
The creation of SM specialization (or verticalization) is that communication across these silos becomes more difficult. IMC campaigns are more complicated and seeing as it's our job to produce the best campaigns possible--we may be doing our large corporate clients a disservice by specializing.
For example, a large Multinational Corporation may have several communication and marketing compartments that have disperse goals with each campaign. Such a company may be establishing a mobile application (Using Miss SM Mobile Expert) to advertise its products and simultaneously launch an Intranet for an employee communication campaign (Using Mr SM Internal Communication Expert).
These campaigns--while seemingly opposite in nature—at its heart have one ultimate goal--to bolster the overall reputation of the company. As such, the messages must be united in nature—and communicate the overall vision of the company.
Thus, ‘Miss SM Mobile Expert’ and ‘Mr. SM Internal Communication Expert’ have to work together with the entirety of the communication individuals to create campaigns that integrate the shared vision of the Multinational Corp—less suffer the consequence that its reputation could be tarnished by communicating un-integrated messages.
Thus, it’s imperative that if you are in the process of verticalization, you understand the importance of IMC campaigns. When becoming the ‘SM expert’ in your specific niche, still be ready to integrate the pre-existing messages into your campaign as well.
Image via SEM Clubhouse
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