Social Media Administrator

Before computers became part of every day business we never had such roles as Systems Administrator or WebMaster. As the business benefits of the technology emerged though, it became good financial sense to have those roles in your organisation. We needed someone to be responsible for those areas of the business as they played such a crucial role in the growth of our business. Some businesses now out source these roles others employ them directly. Whether we have someone dedicated to their function or not, the duties of the roles exist. Usually someone in the organistion is performing them.

I've reached the point where I think we need a Social Media Administrator. Not someone to be the company mouthpiece (although that may be part of their function) but to be manage our social media activity. In our org they would liase with the dev team to get our presence more polished visually and research communities where we should be involved. Not to sell stuff but contribute to the discussion. Yes they would be under the umbrella of alll our social media marketing but their role would be primarily one of administration. If you haven't watched "How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer" I suggest you do if you are interested in Social Media. The doco is a about the science of networks and how they permeate every part of our universe even down to a molecular level. What that doco demonstrates to me is how important it is to connect with other networks (Marc Victor Hansens "One Minute Millionaire" illustrates this from a business perspective also).

The job of the Social Media Adminstrator would to not only update our various SM Outlets but also monitor trends and discussions. Unlike the Prosperity Principle idea of "seeding" blogs with commercial posts, the job of the SocAdmin would be to alert the relevant person in our company of a community they may want to contribute to. The key here is to contribute. Business flows when you give it away. This is my primary reason for giving free advice in the Vlog every week for the last 10 years.

I know @problogger is a genius at this stuff and others as well. Have you found a need for that role in your organisation? I spend so much time researching posts & tweets that it is starting to make sense to appoint one of the team as our SocAdmin. We are already doing it for some of our clients. Would you outsource this role or keep it in house? Or do you have a better way of handling the volume of social media work?