This is a guest post by Kaila West.

Some industries have job titles and descriptions which are very cut and dry. When one thinks of the work a plumber does, for the most part, the mental picture is of a fellow who comes to the customer’s home and takes care of whatever challenges that are occurring with water related aspects in the home. For the most part this is certainly true and accurate, however, as will be discussed in this article, the profession of plumbing is actually much more complicated. Social media career job titles are much more complicated.

Returning to the plumber example, perhaps the fact that highly engineered, plumbed water into and away from palaces started as many as 4,000 years ago. This is quite a long time for the general public to be aware of what a plumber does. One heard the job title of plumber and a description of their work duties was clear in their minds.

But the reality of plumbing, not unlike social media work, is there are very specialized jobs within the the field. Some plumbers only deal with drains, sewerage systems, and the like. Getting the used fluids out of the facility. Others concentrate on renovation projects and some make their living on new construction. Within those focusing on construction are plumbers who only work on homes others on commercial structures. Still, they are generally referred to as plumbers.

Considering the Internet has been around about two decades, and the advent of terms like social media marketing and social communities even less. Companies requiring the help of professionals experienced in the arena of all things social have few standards to rely on when time comes to post job listings. As a result, many of those responsible for finding and hiring to fill these social positions are making it up as they go.

One of the biggest challenges for professionals seeking work in the social media industry is the confusion caused by the various job titles and overlapping duties and requirements set out for these various positions. The following list, then, aims to provide ten separate and distinct names for jobs and brief descriptions to help both those hiring and seeking to be hired.

10 Unique Job Titles and Descriptions of Social Media Career Positions

1. Director of Social Media: Responsible for the development and oversee of social media initiatives and integration into the overall business strategy.
2. Social Media Account Manager: The accounts in reference within this title are not customers or clients, but the actual array of profile accounts which need to be acquired in the various social communities.
3. Social Media Specialist: Defines and Executes the strategies and directions the company will pursue. Developing communities within existing social networks or creating proprietary ones within the business’ structure.
4. Social Media Planner: Develops proposals for digital advertisers, coordinates with media team regarding inventory, and may also manage media across mobile, web and email platforms.
5. Blogger: In the professional sense, the blogger is responsible for regular content creation promoting the marketing message or other focused material which best advances the company.
6. Interactive Project Manager: Possibly considered the jack-of-all-trades, the IPM has knowledge and experiences in a variety of platforms and interfaces. They will understand different technology protocols and have excellent communication and organizational skills.
7. Social Media Analyst: The analyst communicates trends in and results of marketing campaigns to internal agencies and possibly directly to clients. They provide insight and solutions to help attain the client objectives.
8. Social Media Coordinator: Coordinates marketing events with online activity, tracking the analytics of social media influence and is responsible for the regular twitter messages and posts needing to be published to the various social media outlets.
9. Podcaster: Perhaps not thought of as a social media position, the deeply intertwined capabilities of most social networks provide for massive audiences hungry for the multimedia produced and published by the podcaster.
10. Community Manager: Spends all their time facilitating the conversations taking place in the various communities the business is participating in. Content creation and submission to these communities tends to be a part of their work as well.

This guest post is by Kaila West, a writer for a CRM Social Media, a social CRM blog which covers the art of using social media for customer relationship management.