Social media is becoming more important every day as a great way for a company to market itself, its products and communicate with its customers. Young and old generations alike could improve their business skills significantly if they learned the basics of social media and how to use it for development. To encourage this growth, colleges should be integrating social media into their course curriculum and companies need to mandate workshops about the social media industry for their current employees.
There are a lot of companies run by the baby boomer generation that are slow to adapt and still need to learn about social media sites and what they do. These companies need to learn how to use them for personal growth and from a business perspective. Employees and those seeking new jobs need to take advantage of these general social sites which make working, communicating and hiring easier:
Beyond the general sites, it’s important to discuss social media in the office and classroom to address niche sites that fit the needs of your organization or field. Shop owners, wood-workers, photographers and even colleges should be on Pinterest sharing their ideas and work. City Tourism Departments can benefit by sharing photos of their scenic areas and historic building, enticing visitors. Business leaders should be on Quora answering questions and proving their thought leadership and expertise. There are communities geared towards your customers; join them, introduce your company and be a resource.
Companies should consider the requirement of yearly workshops, introducing new sites, as they are ever changing, and how the sites could be used to improve the company. Not only are these sites important for the business, but they can also be used to find future employees by helping to spread the word, to find qualified parties and to conduct your own, free, social background check on potential hires.
While established businesses and professionals could use a boost, younger generations might need to turn it down and tidy it up. New graduates and soon-to-be professionals have been involved in technology their entire lives and are very social media savvy, but do they know how to control their output? They have grown up surrounded by the Internet, and they have been given the freedom to share anything with anyone at any time. This generation of teenagers and twenty-something’s need to learn how important it is to keep your page clean, watch what you post and monitor how you look from the public’s point of view. If they learn to use social media correctly, it could be used to their advantage in furthering their careers and opportunities. Learning the different sites’ privacy settings and customization features will be hugely helpful to accomplishing a happy balance between sharing with friends and protection from criticism. Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts are common places future employers investigate before hiring. According to a career builder surveys, 35% of employers have admitted they disqualified candidates due to what was found on their social media sites.
There are a few colleges across the country that already offer social media classes:
These schools offer social media classes in the Business, English, Psychology and Communications fields. According to the trends, more social media classes will be showing up in college curriculum in the next few years. Social media jobs also are showing up all over the country, across all different fields. Indeed.com shows the term “social media” appearing in job search postings as increased enormously over the past two years.
Social media knowledge is important to every field and more companies than ever will be seeking out new social media hires in the next few years. These hires aren’t solely for Digital Communications and Social Media Manager positions, integrating social media into any position has been a merited across the board. Regardless of the field; interacting, networking and engaging with potential customers and fans will improve your loyalty and reach.
Planning on introducing a social media class? Check out our sample social media course curriculum or the points we feel are important touch on when getting started:
- Social Media Basics
- Best Practices and use cases
- Google+
- The importance of interaction
- Business vs. personal
- Finding your niche medium
- Blogging
- Case Studies
- Campaigns
- Contests
- Crisis Communication
- Crowd-sourcing and Market Research
What topics do you think are most important to go over if someone is just getting involved in social media?
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