Britain. 1965. We’ve had the telephone for nearly 100 years.
The operators in first known (UK) call center proudly call themselves telephone strategists. Actually, they didn’t, but bear with me for the sake of illustration.
A telephone is a tool for conversation. It’s like talking in real life, only callers don’t see each other and they may be many miles apart. The term strategist would be a stretch.
When I think of a modern call center, I think of a support line. These centers are staffed by customer service specialists or support specialists. Often they are tiered by experience. Callers are first routed to lower level specialists; if these first line responders cannot triage, diagnose or remediate a problem, they escalate the problem to the next level.
These people are focused on a well-defined function in business: service. The tools might change — CRM, instant message, Web chat or Twitter — but the core discipline remains.
This is what hangs me up about titles like “social media strategist.” I think it’s narrow-minded. I think those that pin their personal mantra on social are selling themselves short. Further, and I see this more and more, there are young folks, that all they’ve ever done is post to Twitter and Facebook and call themselves social media strategists. Social media is not a strategy! It’s a tactic!
Companies don’t need a social media strategy. They need a business strategy. They need a marketing strategy. All the tactics, whether it’s a telephone call or a tweet, are nested to carry out these strategies.
Companies don't need a social media strategy. They need a business strategy. They need a marketing strategy.Click To Tweet
Social media is one tool among many. With apologies to the handyman, with only a hammer in a belt, every problem begins to look like a nail.
We need to approach social media with a 30,000-foot view — an awareness of what the rest of marketing is doing. Integrated marketing begins with an awareness 30,000-foot it, social media is yet another silo.
Don’t pin your career to simply social media. Within two years, I predict, people will be dumping that term from their social profiles. Imagine what that might mean in 5, or 10 or 100 years from now.
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Photo credit: Flickr, Wystan, Telphone operator… (CC BY 2.0)
