Journalism students often moan and groan that they don’t want to be reporters or editors or even online producers for that matter. Usually, I just shake my head and try to figure out why then they are enrolled in a journalism class and majoring in journalism.
Me. Of all people. Who am I to judge them?
I didn’t go back to school to get a graduate degree in journalism so I could be a reporter. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE traditional media and I know the roles of reporter, editor and producer are very important in our society. However, those jobs aren’t for everyone.
I decided to go back to school and study journalism because I wanted to improve my communication skills. I also wanted to explore new media and see if, coupled with my technical experience, I could find a place in today’s digital society.
Help Wanted: Seeking hip, witty individual to evangelize our XYZ product and web site to the masses. Must be familiar with “insert internet buzzwords here” and all the hype that surrounds it. What works? You tell us – better yet, show us – and the job is yours. You will be an agent for change within our organization. Helmet required.
The good news is there are a lot of cool, exciting jobs out there just waiting for curious journalism grads who know how to write, edit and disseminate messages. Oh, and knowing a thing or two about some of the strengths and limitations of the internet as an unique medium is helpful too.
Here are a few recent real job postings I found. All of them require communication skills. None of them existed 10 years ago.
- Develop plans and processes to build the community and foster vibrant groups.
- Recruit, motivate and manage a team of community moderators and contributors scattered across the country.
- Interact with members of the community on a regular basis to gather their input, to encourage their participation and to formulate new functionality to meet their needs.
- Establish and help enforce standards within the community to minimize conflict and hurt feelings among members.
- Understand user interface and design well enough to formulate changes to sections of the community site that may need improving.
- Interact with editorial team to integrate non-UGC content into the community where relevant.
- Work with audience management team to market the community to new audiences.
- Stay abreast of industry trends and competitive community web sites.
- Conduct data analysis on website activity for multiple client sites
- Work closely with interactive team to implement data-driven marketing strategies
- Identify opportunities through analysis of customer behavior, product sales, referral sources
- Perform email analytics including list segmentation and subject line, copy and offer testing
- Assist with email deployment including list management
- Team with interactive and usability teams to optimize sites
- Evaluate, recommend, deploy and utilize appropriate data collection and analysis applications
- Analyze site performance and trends using path analysis, funnel reports and other analytical data to determine factors impacting visitor behavior
- Design and develop daily, weekly and monthly reporting with appropriate detail for target audience
- Provide analytics back to email, online media and PPC teams for channel optimization
- Setting up accounts and campaigns
- Building and managing keyword lists
- Working collaboratively to write text-based creative copy
- Processing change requests, including bid management
- Coordinating creative upload and editorial review
- Providing regular and ad hoc reports
Maybe one of these jobs is right for you?
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