Since 2010, the LVQ Mülheim (Ruhr) has been training specialists and managers to become social media managers. The journalist has been one of them since the end of April 2013. He reports on his experiences on social media:

It sounds good to me. As a journalist with a traineeship and around 20 years of professional experience, I have now completed a Social Media Manager with an IHK certificate at the LVQ in Mülheim (Ruhr). This means I am better qualified to work in press offices. That is where I want to go. Better qualified, says the LVQ and I say that too.

Do small and medium-sized businesses know how to use social media effectively?

I have my doubts about that. Many people prefer to leave the management of their Facebook or Twitter accounts to interns: “They grew up with it,” I often hear. Social media managers need a certain amount of life experience and people skills to communicate with the outside world. It’s not enough to know how to set up a Facebook page and how to respond to comments in purely technical terms. A smiley face behind a customer’s comment is not enough. Criticism should not be responded to rudely either.

The solution here, as is often the case in social media, is to communicate, but always in a friendly manner. The Chuck Norris variant is not called for: simply crushing critics with cheeky replies only leads to a bad online reputation. A single wrong reaction can damage a company for a long time. The Internet never forgets. Addressing the customer’s problems and offering solutions helps. Not responding to negative posts at all just shows that the company has no idea about the social web. Paranoia kills every conversation. That is its purpose. But the lack of open conversations kills companies.

Cluetrain Manifesto: Almost like a Bible for social media managers.

Here I would like to quote from the Cluetrain Manifesto from 1999, a then visionary collection of 95 theses on the relationship between companies and their customers in the age of the Internet:

• As markets and workers, we wonder why you are not listening to us. You seem to be speaking a different language.
• If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Something interesting for a change.
• Traditional companies may find conversations on the social web confusing. But we are organizing ourselves faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, and no rules to hold us back.

Companies need someone like me for these tasks because I know that the future of communication lies in social networks. Further information about the Social Media Manager course can be found on the LVQ website.