Yes you do.
A successful social-media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content and contests into online marketing.
I’ve been involved in social media for about ten years now and what I find obvious, natural and easy, others find impossible to grasp.
Sure you can read a bunch of books and blogs and learn the knowledge, but that only goes some way to delivering the goodies. There are other people out there who know and live in the space of social media. It is a complex and nuanced place and takes a lot of real time experience to develop the ability.
I wouldn’t say it’s an art, it just takes time and incredible amounts of grit to keep working at it.
Those of us who have been doing it for years have a head start.
Over the years technology has improved, making a few things easier, but there is not technological solution for experience and real life knowledge.
And if you were thinking that this blog post was all about trying to persuade you to hire me and others like me, you are absolutely right.