Tuesday, February 9, 2010

WCM market size and jobs- real enough for Mom

I read an article about "10 Careers that didn't exist 10 years ago" and what struck me was that of these 10, four of them are right in the heart of our business, web content management (WCM). They include 1- Blogger, 2- Community Managers or Content Managers, 3- Social Media Strategists and 4- User Experience analysts.

It is a natural reaction to be excited that there is growth, interest, and demand associated with ones industry and technology. It is confirmation that, "Yes Mom, this is a real business". A bit of feeling you have arrived.

Then the irony struck me. Aren't tools such as web content management systems with social media features, in part supposed to empower writers, subject matter experts, and other expressives without extra people involved? So what is the extra help for? Is this a trick?

Well, let's see what they do. Bloggers research and write posts to communicate objectives, ideas, and positions- whether promoting for a company, organization or oneself. With the informal tone, the ability to turn on a dime, and create two way conversations, bloggers can get a lot more accomplished and interactions happening when it used to be just a broadcast.

Community and Content Managers do the same on a broader scale. They motivate and referee as well as instigate and create.

Social Media strategists- they are they ones who play chess knowing four steps ahead where they want to land and what others might do. Except the playground is twitter, facebook, blog sites, and the latest mobile mash up.

And the fourth, User Experience analysts, well they help clean up the mess normal people make when they try to become artists on the web. A great user experience is hard to describe, but you sure know it when you have a really good or bad one. It is kind of like cruising downhill on your mountain bike with your tunes blasting versus over the handlebars then into the ditch wondering how your wheel got reshaped into a mobius strip.

When we think about how much broader an audience we can now reach online, how much selectively we can messages and hear back from our audience, how much easier we can research and find crucial information, then these new roles make a lot of sense. And it becomes clear that they are more than just direct substitutes for industries where there is displacement (e.g. traditional media and advertising) but part of a larger industry.

My colleague Darren Guarnaccia has some real insight into this, and in his travels with leading analysts, sees Web Content Management as a one $Billion dollar industry, and growing to 7 times that size when you add in Email, Web and Marketing Analytics, Marketing Automation, Social media software, eCommerce etc. We need a lot of guides, mechanics, creatives and advisors as we make our way into completely new ways to interact together, and of course the leading companies are going to make this all work together as part of the expected website experience.

So yes, Mom, these are real jobs that do make a net new difference in our world!

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