An ode to the social media manager
The image of a social media manager at newspapers is often constructed by stereotypes. The generation of journalists who grew up with typewriters, fax machines and pagers, finds it hard to see the benefit of these social savvy do it alls. The gap between their history and those of the new generation is massive.
The social media managers are mostly seen as young hip predominantly good looking girls, perhaps in an internship or fresh out of college, concerned with their mobile phone half of the business day and stuck inside their pink macbooks for the other half. At old fashion papers, they are stuck in an office bordering the cafeteria. Embracing social, but perhaps half heartedly.
But in reality they are the nervecenter of the organisation. Making fast paced decisions on what stories to share, what language to use and what methods fit the brand identity of the title. While a paper will only be printed once a day, the social media manager is on the frontline engaging your consumer all day long. Sharing content from when they wake up until they go to sleep at night. In today’s business models it is them that generate the most traffic to a title’s website (nowadays 40 percent of publisher traffic comes from Facebook). Thus they are single handedly responsible for a major slice of the revenue.
Recognizing the massive need for an uphaul in the traditional business model of newspapers also means embracing those hip youngsters that know exactly how to reach their audience. If you want to effectively adapt your strategy to the reality in the market, talk to your social media manager because they probably know the market and your consumers best. When you are ready you can drop us a line, because we help them make the best decisions for your brand.
This article is written by Nine Connections’ Thijs de Bekker, former journalist and business developer. At Nine Connections we celebrate the social media manager and believe in empowering their position as this nervecenter. Our tools do excactly that.
