Social media training is essential

I get asked a lot about what types of employees do we hire for my social media firm SPECK Media. Clients will often ask… What’s the background of the people you hire? My response is always the same, we look for qualified candidates that have either a journalism or marketing background, but there really isn’t any way that future employees can gain social media knowledge or training, we train them.

For the past 4 years that’s been my tag line, but this past year I started taking a more involved look into what types of skills a social media manager or strategist might need.

I first started to look at what was already out there in the industry. There’s a lot of organizations and schools offering classes in social media. These classes cover everything from Facebook 101 to blogging made easy. Besides the classes there’s over 200 books about social media, so if you don’t want to listen to an instructor, you can spend your time reading from the experts.

In an industry that has only been around for 5 years are these materials (classes and books) the best way to learn about social media?

After doing extensive research, my answer is maybe.