[I wanted to post some quick thoughts here which I think put today's Voce news in some additional context...]
So in my previous post, I touched on an observation, a belief really, that there’s a widening gap within this bubbling ecosystem of social media practitioners.
On one side you have an up crop of strategists that are advising, counseling and generally speaking, helping their clients and companies plot their social media programs. And on the other side you have a pool of developers who have learned that there’s dimension, color and a layer of richness that people are increasingly expecting from the social web, and, well, they know how to deliver this experience. Period.
You have, essentially, the social media architect and the social media developer. Each capable in their own right, and each equally incapable in so many others. And therein lies the gap.
Architects will plan incredibly cool and compelling social media strategies, but inevitably they reach a threshold, usually it’s a technical one, which forces them to compromise, shelf or trash their ideas because they don’t have the resources or the knowledge to push things forward. Or, worse yet, they don’t acknowledge this technical threshold and we get really interesting looking Blogger and Myspace pages to talk about.
On the flip side, developers can make incredibly cool and compelling tools, with all the 2.0 lipstick, but fail miserably at figuring out how to apply these experiences to broader pains and problems that might exist. It’s the all sizzle, no steak conundrum…
Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’s a gap that either can cross easily.
For this reason, I think the stronger social media practitioners will be those who can continue to bring these two areas of expertise together and approach programs way more holistically (from the get-go) — thinking about strategy AND development in tandem — verses trying to bolt the other side on to an idea, or worse yet, trying to fake it.
Somewhere in the middle here also lives a new sort of practitioner, maybe it’s the media architect Tom Foremski speculated, maybe it’s something else all together, it’s all still taking shape, but I expect it will solidify very soon. This Voce post today is just reflective of how one company is planning to get the job done….
February 6, 2008 at 10:44 am
Mike,
Good discussion and important points raised as to how we should evolve our own skill sets or work with others who are experts in what we’re lacking.
I would venture to say that, for Web developers, it’s an easier gap to bridge to social media communication and marketing, than vice versa. I’m still of the mind that, if you look at all PR, advert. and other marketing communications, social media is still new (though growing). So, *most* professional communicators don’t have the online, interactive mindset that the web development folks do.
For those like Voce that are already involved in social media, you’re apt to lead clients and work *with* developers, than to have business taken away by developers who venture into social media because they have the better mindset and comfort level.
–Mike
February 6, 2008 at 10:59 am
I agree, a traditional comms/marketing consultant would need to have some crazy skills to bridge the gap (php what?), but it’s not like a web developer has it that much easier. It gets back to what a lot of us are calling the art and science of social media work; it’s really hard to have a strong understanding of both things, they’re just so different…
February 6, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Mike: how is this different than the slew of skills agencies have always coordinated around projects? PR is an outlier here, because you would have people who were able to do things soup to nuts: account work, creative, strategy & media outreach. Most everything else requires a dance between account planners, client service peeps, creatives, media buyers, etc. Ditto for digital projects. Or, web service firms have product people, interaction designers, front end architects, db experts, backend coders, biz dev, etc.
I just don’t see this range of skills as all that unique to social media. What is unique (to me) is the real time combination of strategic vision and tactical nuance. Technical stuff still feels like it can be pretty instrumental.
February 6, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I dunno, I think the range of skills required are fairly unique, that’s the thing; supergluing two generalists together, an account manager and a web designer to develop, say, a blog, gets things absolutely nowhere, unless both those folks have unique skills, an appreciation, an understanding of how a social app (and a social experience) is suppose to work…
February 7, 2008 at 6:09 am
The problem generally comes in bigger companies, because they hire based around set skills which can be replicated and replaced as necessary.
Whereas in smaller companies, there’s more opportunity and need for a more general skill set.
It is possible to work around this, and there are changes happening in many companies, (I’m one example, switching from editorial to marketing, and developing in my spare time), but it’s all part of the very slow and gradual changes which are being forced by new technology and new approaches.
February 9, 2008 at 1:53 am
One of the underlying issues in this debate is demonstrated in the comments: it also is a power and influence struggle between two sides: the quantitative and qualitative, or, to put it another way: the skills-based web developer vs. the human conversation nurturer.
Why oh why would we think it is “easier” for the quant side to move to the qual side? That does a great disservice as to how difficult it is to nurture conversation, for one. And yet, the assumption that quant is hard and qual is easy is found everywhere.
There is a battle for resources here that has existed for a very long time. Obviously we need both. Equally obvious is that there will be special people who can bridge the gap, translating between paradigms, if you will.
Let’s just be careful we don’t bury certain value assumptions about what is more or less difficult, because this also conceals power issues.
Ok, rant over.
February 13, 2008 at 11:41 am
The question is not how do you close or fill the gap, but how do you create a system that manages gaps as they are constantly being created. If there is one thing we should recognize at this point it is change is the only constant.
The issue touched on in your post is broader than Social media and touches on an age old problem in IT that is only becoming prominent in media because of the advancement of technology.
Sorry to say there is no easy solution because the “solution” is specific to each company and each situation. The many gaps being created across many areas of marketing will only continue for the next several years as the collective marketing community sorts through bigger issues related to how we compete for audience attention and establish connections in meaningful ways.
Much like web 2.0, we will need to examine each role, create many new service specialties operate in dynamic teams that are different for each project. Finding balance in the communication world will begin to occur once we accept this new dynamic environment and develop management systems to avoid being limited by the gaps.