Reading the article “Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan” it´s very clear that now and in the future this new medias (including blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, and any other new social network) are going to be one of the most important ones to connect and be related with customers and get new clients, as the paper says “technology have helped to migrate this relationship to an interactive level where technology contributes to brand building by creating and sustaining a long-term relationship with the customer”. The question is, who is going to manage this relation, or do we need someone to do it?

These social networks are the responsible of this highly increase of the activity, each day the companies are exploring more and more this new medias and channels to manage their online relation, seeking new markets and businesses and relation with customers, this will need a new kind of professionals.

According to the Spaniard Digital Journal Puromarketing.com (2011), in Europe the velocity of growth of this digitalization is getting faster than the capacity of forming of these new professionals with a global and cross vision of this new digital environment, there are only few professionals with the skills and knowledge to aboard this unstoppable demand of managers, operators and digital transformers.

In the strategic and some tactic field, these new professionals are called social media Directors or Community Managers. We have a lot of definitions for this position, if we look at the Financial Times Lexicon, they define it as “An executive in the company who acts as the ambassador of a company or brand on the web. The community manager builds and monitors multiple communities generated in blogs, forums, social networks, etc. S/he becomes the authorized voice of the company”.

Reading Claire Flanagan (2011), we find that this position is getting critical, as she says: “With the emergence of social collaboration tools and the impact they have on employee and customer communities, community management has emerged in a critical, vital role”.

But finally, this important role is still evolving, and needing new skills and knowledge’s, the question is if the companies are going to hire these professionals, or need to do it, for this position, and do we have a successful tool to measure their impact?

Sources:
Singh, T., Veron-Jackson, L., & Cullinane, J. (2008). Blogging: A new place in your marketing game plan. Business Horizons

Puromarketing Journal (2011, 8). Managers de Marketing Digital y Community Managers, entre los perfiles más demandados en el sector TIC. Retrieved from http://www.puromarketing.com

Flanagan, C. (2011, 4). Community Managers: What they do, Why you need them. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com