Social Media Marketing is more than a trendy buzzword. It has become an intimate way that the stuffy corporate America of yesterday has been able to open up and connect with their customers in a new way as never before. Social Media Marketing especially gives the small business owner the ability to connect on a personal level as the “corner store” shop owner did in years past.

More and more companies realize their traditional media advertising dollars don’t bring in the return on investment they used to, due in part to DVR’s allowing people to skip commercials on television, more people getting their news online and on their mobile devices, as well as the increasing reliability of local web searches replacing the traditional yellow pages.

Social media usage saw an 82% increase last year in time spent on these types of sites; more people than ever are spending their time online in this venue. This flourishing transition to Social Media has moreover produced opportunities for an occupation that did not exist just a short time ago, the Social Media Manager.

Everyone is going social; not only Fortune 500 companies but any small business such as dentists, mechanics, painters, marriage planners. These businesses urgently want to be a part of social media, but are unaware how to run a social media campaign, and furthermore don’t have the time to spend on Facebook or Twitter.

Many businesses are looking to get an online and social site presence, but lack the time and knowledge to self-implement a strategy; here lies the demand for the Social Media Manager… people who are already experts on Social Media and will get results faster with less effort than a business owner could.

But what do Social Media Managers do? Apart from creating and implementing your social media strategy, they are your brand’s online manager and perform tasks like:

1. Cleaning up your Twitter communications and weeding out the spam messages, leaving the messages that are critical to you, or routing them to the person or department able to assist them.

2. Blog integration with social media accounts for appearance and content distribution; and in some cases Search Engine Optimization and blog content creation and consulting.

3. Working to grow your network or followers. An active, and interactive, social network presence with quality content is the key to social success. It’s all in the numbers, the more people on your network the more people see or read your messages.

These tasks can get pushed to the “back burner” as the day to day needs of your business arise, even though they generally take only one to three hours to do. Employing someone full or even part time would not be cost effective; while doing this yourself or using a current employee to do it might not produce good results due to a lack of knowledge or time constraints. Hiring a consultant to do it for you, obtains results faster and more economically, as you concentrate on more critical aspects of your business.