Researching to be a Social Media Guru

Being a nurse and about to embark on Medical School, I am a big advocate of research!! Knowledge is power!! I have found several books to be beneficial for anyone starting out in the up and coming field of Social Media Management. I have predicted that in the next five years, you will be seeing Technical colleges and Community colleges offering diplomas and certificates if not associates degrees in this field. In this digital world we live in business and big corporations have started to see that most folks are on line, more than they watch TV, read magazines ( heck you can do that online) or listen to the radio, umm do people even listen to radios anymore??!! My point is this, most business are going to be employing and needing Social Media Managers, we are seeing it now, and there will be a boom for it here in the next five years.  So I have included some links of some great books that are available on Amazon.com. I highly encourage you to click on the link and give them a look see, I would suggest you get this resource books at this low price now, because like I said, they will be getting more expensive as this field explodes onto the scene. I have put them on the side of my blogs for you to go directly to the page for you to preview them and buy them. I hope this helps, here in the next week I will be posting some companies that I have compiled from Graigslist, and other places that are hiring Social Media Managers. It takes me a while to add these so bear with me, as I research every company for you, so that you are getting legit leads.

Should you pay for social media training??

Ok in my research I have come across quite a few sites that will offer you training in Social Media, and some claim that they can show you ways to get these jobs. Well in my experience I would think that most people who are wanting to get into this field already have experience in social media. I personally would not waste my money on such an investment. Social Media is a new and upcoming field where most of the time the person that is needing it, really doesn't have a set standard of skills other than that the employee has ran some sort of social media site. There are some companies that will ask that you have a bachelor's degree in marketing, bit in my research, I have seen that they put this in the ad to kind of weed out people. In the coming week I will posting some companies that I know are looking for social media manager for you, and hopefully some good sites that you can gleam some tips from.

What's all this hype about Social Media??

I am a newbee to the wonderful world of online, work from home, social media and digital sales. I am a 48 year old nurse and empty nester who has decided to cut back on the nursing and work from the comfort of her home, yea easy said than done. I have learned from this endeavor that it is a very time consuming journey. I have had to really learn what to put in search engines, such as on craigslist and other classified search sites to wade through alot of irrelevant postings to get to what I am looking for. Here is what I have learned.

1. You do not have to limit your searches to your particular city, and thank god for it, because I live in a little podunk town with on street light. lol  I have found that the medium sized cities such as Jacksonville Florida, Tampa Florida, Sacramento California. New Orleans have the most Social Media Jobs, I have done searches in Atlanta and LA, but there just really doesn't seem to be that many in my experience. of course that could change
2. RESEARCH, RESEARCH, AND MORE RESEARCH!!  I used youtube videos, other blogs, facebook sites etc to gleam little pearls of wisdom. 
3. AVOID new start up apps or companies, I mean read the ad, research the company, but typically I have found that they don't want to pay you until their presence gets off the ground. 
4. Create you a great and dynamic resume' for your potential employers. I have found some sites that show you templates of very nice quality social media resume's  one is, http://www.snagajob.com/resumes/social-media-manager/  http://www.dayjob.com/content/social-media-resume-1458.htm    http://mashable.com/2011/05/20/social-media-resumes/
5. USE the network of folks you already have at your fingertips, such as your facebook peeps, your family ( that aunt that just started her business and hasn't a clue about social media) past employers, past school mates, friends, spouses of friends etc, you get the idea, let it be known that you are embarking on this new fields and that you would love to help grow their social media presence!!