Students perception of qualifications for successful social media coordinator

Abstract

Social media has grown explosively and become very popular in recent years; the average time spent on social media is increasing steadily, especially among young people. Organizations, public or private, have realized the importance of social media as a powerful tool for establishing relationships with citizens or consumers. Although potential benefits from social media could be enormous, organizations face a big challenge in taking advantage of social media, since the old way of managing traditional media does not work for social media and numerous social media platforms make the issue of managing social media complicated. More and more organizations want to hire some professionals as an attempt to manage and utilize social media effectively for their businesses or projects. Job titles commonly posted in the job market are Social Media Coordinator, Social Media Specialist, Social Media Manager, Online Community Manager, Public Relations Specialist, and so on. A latest report by US Department of Labor estimated the number of jobs Public Relations Specialists in 2008 to be about 275,000 and projected jobs to grow 24% over the next decade, which would be much higher than other occupations. Universities need to prepare a curriculum for students who want these jobs. The authors of this paper surveyed about 400 students at a business school regarding various aspects of social media and qualifications and skills for a successful Social Media Coordinator.