However, I think there is still a place for a “social media marketer” inside companies of a certain size. There are a couple of things this person can do:

1) Manage the corporate accounts. Sure, @zappos is actually managed by the CEO, but I don’t think that’s what every company has to do. Twitter is simply a communication channel. It makes perfect sense to have a corporate account that’s managed by a dedicated social media person. They can then direct people to others within the company as appropriate… sort of a Twitter receptionist, if you will. Facebook and LinkedIn both now have company pages. A lot of businesses set up MySpace pages for the business. Who’s supposed to manage those?

2) Evangelize social media participation within the company. Not everyone who ought to be participating is participating. And while management has to publicly support/encourage social media participation, having someone who goes and talks to individuals and makes specific suggestions, or captures their stories, or helps them set up their accounts/profiles, etc., makes perfect sense and is NOT the job of the CEO.

3) Make suggestions for more effective engagement. Individuals shouldn’t all be trying to keep up with all the new tools, sites, services, etc. Let a social media specialist do that and filter down to what’s relevant and beneficial to the company.

So maybe the issue is with the job description, but I think there’s definitely a need for a dedicated social media person at companies “of a certain size” (how big that is depends on the nature of your business, of course).

Oh, and regarding “self-proclaimed social media gurus”…

Yeah, there are some people that haven’t earned it. But some of us have and aren’t ashamed to claim it. Why? Because guess what… buyers who don’t know any better are looking on Google (or LinkedIn, as the case may be) for “social media experts” or “social media marketers” or whatever.

It would be downright foolish NOT to lay claim to those terms. I’ll deal with differentiating myself from the johnny-and-jenny-come-latelys once I get my foot in the door. Calling yourself a social media expert isn’t ego, or pretentious, it’s just smart SEO.

As far as being a guru or an expert or anything else, that’s all nonsense in s ‘new’ field, though some people have had more experience than others and some have meaningful insights to share – non of which rises to the level of a title , especially when its self-applied. As a female friend of mine is fond of saying ” Anytime a woman says she’s hot – she’s probably not!”

I don’t think that email is dead or even dying, it just needs to be reinvented (it’s still the #1 daily activity, forget the “social media is more popular than email” hype.)

Have you checked out Google Wave? That looks like a feasible future direction to me – unified messaging built around a topic. Almost like a built-on-the-fly highly personalized message thread. Come to think of it, CompuServe invented that idea too! Back in 1996 or so, CompuServe was working a on “super forum” project code-named Veda (Sanskrit for wisdom) that would have tightly integrated email with Forums. It got killed during the dark days before AOL took over. Everything old is new again…