What Does the Future Hold For Communicators? A Look At The Jobs of Tomorrow

What Does The Future Hold

This is the time of year that we tend to spend doing two things, we reflect on the year that has been and we make promises about the year to come. Since the stats are against us keeping our New Year’s resolutions, can I suggest instead that we think about the possibilities the future holds?

When I consider the future of communications I get excited about being in this field.  It is a sector that is growing and blossoming and the biggest challenge facing most communicators is the ability to keep up with the changes.  Of course even if you keep up you have to be able to discern between what’s worth learning and what can be ignored. Not as easy as you might think when new tools are constantly being added to the mix and when platforms that you’ve never heard of become go to destinations virtually overnight.

All of these changes mean the very nature of our jobs are also altering.  We can all expect that our future jobs will look very different from what we do today.  Just as authors now have to exist in a virtual world and communications means having dexterity in social media, we can expect to see changes across many different sectors as we all become more virtual. To satisfy my curiosity I went to the internet to look at ideas and I brought some back for you to consider.  What’s interesting is that some of the “future” jobs I found are things that people are doing today. The future is now.

Avatar Manager – This individual designs and manages holograms of virtual people.  Yes, that’s right, your personal brand will be a lot more complex in the future and your avatar will be the single strongest element of that brand.  Imagine the nightmares that would follow if your avatar was hacked?

Digital Architect – In this profession you design the settings where virtual retailers will sell their goods.  Rather than having consumers scroll through uninspiring pages of images, they will instead be able to “visit” virtual stores whose ambiance will matter as much as it does now, more so in fact since you should be able to achieve any setting you like in a virtual world.

Digital Media Planner:  This position already exists but perhaps hasn’t been fully flushed out into an individual job in most organizations. This is essentially a high-tech version of a media buyer. This individual scans the internet and determines what ‘s hot with who and what sites would represent good opportunities for clients.  They decide what kind of ads and what sites will best use your Internet advertising budget.

Personal Brand Manager:  I thought these guys already existed and in Hollywood they were called agents, but it seems this future professional does more than sell your talents.  The PBM will develop and manage your personal brand so that your avatar says does and looks just right and so that the only side of you that’s seen in the virtual world will be a good one.  This may require deleting bad internet press or drowning it in good positive stories about you.  I’m pretty sure these services are for hire today.

Social Media Strategist: This position is similar to the digital media planner, but is related to the thinking behind the decision to purchase.  The SMS helps organizations to develop a following on growing and fast changing social sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Although this is still predominantly an outsourced service, larger organizations are seeing the benefit of hiring in-house specialist to create everything from buzz about product to ad campaigns that are intended to be viral.

Web Analyst: This role is an expansion on the marketing role that already exists today but will become more important going forward. Since a lot of what organizations do in the virtual world is intended to drive consumers to their websites, it follows that you will need someone to look at the behavior of consumers once they get to your site. A web analyst will use customer information from the visits to your website to predict trends. This will allow you to build better informed advertising and communications strategies.

Omnipotence Delimiter: I personally think this one may be needed by some of our political figures right now, in fact I can think of a mayor who may be in need of these services. The OD’s job is to rein in our belief that anything is possible and we are all-powerful.

What do you think?  What jobs does your future hold?  Do you think these jobs are likely or that they already exist?

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Communications – Better Late Than Never

Communications, Better Late Than Never

Guest Post by Louise Crandall

This story, which took place quite a few years ago on a deserted beach in the Caribbean, certainly exemplifies the concept: Communications – better late than never.

I used to like going to places that hadn’t yet been overrun with tourists. While the area now has dozens of hotels and mini-malls, at that point there was only one hotel on a 20-kilometer stretch of gorgeous, deserted beach. One afternoon, I was walking down the beach when it started to rain. Noticing a run-down bar on the edge of the sand, I went up and asked if I could join the dozen or so locals who were sitting around under a thatched roof beside the hut, drinking beer and waiting for the rain to stop. I spent a couple of pleasant hours, practicing my mediocre Spanish on the women and kids, and making jokes with the men. Think I bought everyone a round too.

When the rain finally slacked off and I got up to leave, one of the women said that since we’d all had a good time, why didn’t I come back for lunch tomorrow.  This sounded like a good idea to me since who wants to hang out with other sunburned tourists? Better to mix with locals, improving one’s capacity in a foreign language and learning local customs.  So the next morning I headed out around 11am to join my new buds. As I was leaving the hotel property, the gardener asked where I  was going. “To the bar down the beach”, I said. His somewhat shocked response was, “Lady, that isn’t a bar. That’s the local *#@+!house!”

In retrospect, I hadn’t paid much attention to the visible cues such as money changing hands, the hammock in the otherwise empty  hut, and the wide variety of skin tones of the kids running around. In fact, I had helped one women argue for more money when a guy was handing over a few pesos – for the beer I thought. I continued my walk up the beach and this time just waved cheerily at the girls as I  passed the establishment.

Tips

  • Be aware of the context in which you are communicating.
  • Do your research, know your audience.
  • When things don’t go as you planned, be gracious.

Louise Crandall is a communications specialist and an amazing writer. While her forte is travel writing, she is a master at pulling together complex communications projects with apparent ease.

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Ask for the Order

Just Ask - Commstorm

Guest Post by Diana Marinova

Ask for the order or what lessons about communication the lady in the supermarket taught me. Honoring Debra’s one year anniversary of blogging, I decided to share a little story from few months ago. It’s a very ordinary every day story but put in the right context and perspective, we can learn a lot about communication from it.

The story

One cloudy morning, I went to the supermarket because I ran out of coffee. Maybe it’s good to know (in advance) that I am not a morning person and I definitely hate going to the supermarket. So, I entered the supermarket. I looked around (I was on a vacation so I didn’t quite know that particular supermarket). I found the coffee, took my brand and went to the cash register.

The lady looked at me, saw the coffee, ran it through the bar code reader and said to me: “We have a new brand of biscuits in the store. I tried them this morning and they are delicious! And at a promotional rate, too! Would you like to try them?”

I stood there for a moment thinking – well, yeah, who doesn’t like a nice chocolate treat with their coffee – so I nodded affirmatively. She ran the biscuits through the bar code reader, too. Then she just took out from a little fridge beside her a small cartoon of milk and said: “And you gotta try both the coffee and the biscuits with this milk! It’s not at a discounted rate but it sure will make your day if you have your morning coffee and biscuits with it!” – and she winked at me – LOL

I laughed and I felt good – it’s not every day that someone winks at you the old fashion way, eh? Besides, she did make me smile although I hadn’t had my coffee yet… So I ended up buying both the milk and the biscuits along with the coffee that I went for in the first place… and an ice-cream – because I was feeling good 😉

Ask for the order, always: The customer may or may not buy something. But if you ask them to, politely and with a hint of humor, they are more likely to!

Don’t be shy. Don’t be rude. Don’t be arrogant. Don’t be pushy. Be yourself and ask for   the order genuinely – as if you are talking to a friend and making a personal recommendation regardless what the answer might be.

Share the information you have: Being a non-morning hating-the-supermarket customer, no way could I have noticed there are cookies at a discounted rate; or a small carton of milk beside the cashier. And I definitely had no way of knowing the brand of biscuits is new in that particular store. So, unless the lady at the cash register told me all that, there was no way for me to make a decision to purchase anything beside the coffee I went there for.

Don’t assume the customer knows something. Don’t assume the customer doesn’t want something. Don’t assume the customer doesn’t care. Don’t assume the customer doesn’t want to be bothered. Well, basically – don’t assume anything. Assumptions are your enemy when it comes to communication (and sales). Just share the information you have and deem important. I will cite here Debra – “information shared is power squared” 😉

Connect on a personal level: As hard as it may sound, it really isn’t. In my story – the lady in the supermarket winked at me! It was unexpected; it was funny; it was personal – it definitely helped me like her and purchase all she had to offer.

Connecting on a personal level doesn’t mean you have to know the person you are dealing with. It means being human; being yourself; being honest and forthcoming; being creative; being funny sometimes. Connecting on a personal level has a lot to do with being genuinely interested in what’s going around you. More importantly, it means helping the other party, even if they don’t know they need help – and just because you can!

Thank you, Debra, for hosting my story on your blog! And to all of you, dear readers – tell us in the comments –

What else did you learn about communications from my story?

Diana Marinova is a freelance marketing consultant and writes a wonderful bog providing smart and practical advice for freelancers and anyone in the business world who has clients or is a client.

Cafe con galleta (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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