Social media staffing: Are we doing it wrong?
Sometimes, when you start a blog post, you can be overcome by events—or at least overcome by other bloggers. I recently started writing a post inspired by Lynn Morton's comments about a recent spate of turnover among association social media managers. Since then, Maggie McGary, Maddie Grant, and David Gammel have all added their thoughts.
For me, the recent turnover brings back memories of working in a Northern-Virginia-based association in the late 1990s. We couldn't keep an IT manager on staff to save our lives. Someone would start, and two months later, they'd have a great offer from
But there's a difference between the turnover we faced in our IT manager position then and turnover in social media positions now. The way my former association was structured, the IT manager job was primarily internal-facing and technical; he or she focused on the day to day "keep the computers up and running" aspects of IT. When the position turned over, it was tough. But our IT strategy overall wasn't derailed, because our IT director was still there and still moving it forward.
Social media positions, however, are outward-facing by their very nature. And they're personal. When someone interacts with you on Twitter or Facebook, they're typically interacting with you as an individual human being. As they get to know you, they'll invest in you as a person. So when a social media position turns over, it's very noticeable to the members and stakeholders who interacted with him or her.
Maggie, Maddie, and Lynn's posts all address some of the reasons why we might be seeing turnover in social media positions right now. What concerns me most is the structural aspects of such turnover. Are associations structuring social media jobs in such a way that they’re doomed to churn?
Sometimes there are good reasons to create a job that will turn over regularly. Some great entry level positions are designed to be opportunities for bright people who will learn for a year or two and then move on to bigger things.
But social media jobs are such a direct connection between staff person and member that it seems counterproductive to structure them as one-year learning opportunities. Members will notice turnover there much more than they might notice turnover elsewhere in the organization. (Believe me—I changed jobs more than a year ago and I still hear from members who just noticed that my title’s different in the magazine masthead.)
I’m worried that members could become gun shy, and less willing to engage, given regular turnover in their social media contacts. They might start to question what's "going on" in your organization to cause so many people to leave.
As we’re all figuring out what social media in associations will look like moving forward, it's worthwhile for associations to also consider the implications of their staff structure. If you decide to actually staff social media, is there value in building such positions in a way that is attractive enough for an employee to stay around for a while? If there is value there, what would such an attractive position look like?
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Comments
Your post struck a chord with me as I was one of the social media people changing positions mentioned in Lynn's article and still struggling with the very questions you ask at the end of the article.
Speaking only for myself, the limiting structure of the job and the exchange of sharing my life, personality and online time for dollars was way out of sync. My former organization was accommodating and tried to add to my comfort with flexible time, allowing me to work from home quite a bit, which was worth a lot to me for a long time; but I didn't really have anywhere to go from where I was.
I think many organizations are struggling with how to support these very public positions and I predict a need for sessions, like "The Social Face for My Organization Left. Now What?" and "How to Avoid Pied Piper Syndrome" in the future.
For now I am trying to respond to my former members with the same care and concern that I did before. You really can't fake building meaningful experiences for members, so I will be watching this space closely to see how other people respond.
Posted by: KiKi L'Italien | November 20, 2009 5:43 PM
KiKi, thank you so much for responding! It's really helpful to hear from someone who's actually going through this experience.
It's commendable that you're still responding to former members in a caring way, and that says a lot about you as a person. But it points to an important thing associations have to ask themselves: How will those ex-social media employees interact with members after they no longer work for your organization? I would hope that most will be professional and constructive in how they handle that situation. But, human nature being what it is, I'm sure that won't always be the case.
I really like your idea for a session on "The Social Face of My Organization Left. Now What?" It's going to be worth following up with some of the organizations facing this turnover now to see how they handle the situation moving forward.
Best of luck in your new position--they're clearly lucky to have you!
Posted by: Lisa Junker | November 20, 2009 9:41 PM
We have been hearing more in qualitative research projects lately that association members (mostly leaders) infer that there are 'problems internally' prompted primarily by staff turnover. This seems somewhat surprising to me, using ASAE as an example: in volunteer activities over the past almost 20 years, I get to know really nice younger staff who serve as liaison but you know going in that they will be in that role for maybe three years and then they have to move (on or up). I'm assuming that social media-experienced individuals are a hot ticket and perhaps an exception to the current trend of greater employment stability among incumbents, fearful of job loss and the risk that comes from assuming a new position in a new employer that may be built on shifting sands.
But some of us in the association world have consciously shifted from role to role to have an impact and to gain greater skills in general. I know after spending 4 1/2 years with my first association in two positions that I didn't want to spend long tours of duty, so I put in 1 1/2 to 3 years each in four different roles. It would be interesting to see what average turnover is within association by level and per position, and how much of it is voluntary or involuntary .. but just as a marketing guy I found it helpful to drive for sharp improvements in infrastructure and performance and then move on, leaving the organization better than I could it, I suspect social media people may be like that as well.
What's most important is to engage more mid- and senior execs to contribute to the social media presence, so that active community members grow accustomed to hearing multiple distinct "voices & faces of the association." I'm actually surprised to hear that social media is focused so much on a single person, as most senior staff and/or long-tenured individuals have an entire network of personal contacts in their profession or industry: getting more of them to convert those informal networks into the association's social media activities seems like a logical development to me.
Posted by: Kevin Whorton | November 24, 2009 9:02 AM
I've been thinking about this post for a few days now, trying to put together a coherent response. I have much to say about this topic--naturally!--but don't want to write a dissertation here in the comments. I guess my main points would be these:
1) Social media is about passion and many associations are not structured to accommodate employees who are passionate about their jobs. If your association is looking to hire someone to do social media, are you going to empower that person to speak/act on behalf of the association when necessary, or are they going to have to spend hours (or days) having to navigate through internal silos and/or non-responsive staff members before they can respond to a member's question or concern? Social media is about immediacy; if your association's culture will not allow for immediacy, it's inevitable that the social media person will eventually grow frustrated. If you're going to go to the trouble to try to attract a talented community manager, make sure you're willing to give them the freedom to do what they need to do to grow a great community.
2) If you're on the fence about whether or not this social media stuff is really a good idea, or thinking it's probably just a fad, or thinking maybe we better hire someone to do it since everyone else is: don't. Social media is a top-down thing; if the senior members of your staff are dubious about the merits of social media and/or not enthusiastic about it, don't bother hiring anyone to do it. Nobody wants a job where they feel that what they do is not respected or valued.
3) Social media transcends silos; you have to be willing to let the person staffing your association's social media initiatives have access to all departments. Does your association's structure only allow director level and above to attend internal team meetings?If you're not willing to bend this rule to allow the social media person to participate on internal committees and knowledge sharing, don't hire a social media person. Social media is about all parts of the association: education, member service, marketing, web, communications, PR, governance, events, etc. If the person staffing it doesn't have access to the information he/she needs, he/she cannot effectively do the job.
I'll stop now but if you're coming to Great Ideas, Maddie Grant, Todd Carpenter and I will be doing a session about this exact topic and it will be a great opportunity examine this issue in depth.
Posted by: Maggie McGary | November 28, 2009 11:07 AM