Internet Marketing Is Not A Career

I read this article on forbes. She had advice for 20 year old and I was surprised to see that one of her points was:

"Social Media is Not a Career – These job titles won’t exist in 5 years. Social media is simply a function of marketing; it helps support branding, ROI or both. Social media is a means to get more awareness, more users or more revenue. It’s not an end in itself. I’d strongly caution against pegging your career trajectory solely to a social media job title."

I personally feel that what she said is true and this is one of the dangers of not only Social Media jobs but of anything related to Internet Marketing.

Its great to make money of the internet but if you are an internet marketer you put all your eggs in the basket called internet as opposed to being a marketer where you put your eggs in many different baskets. That is why I am working on a masters degree in business and hope to become a management consultant some day. Many times I think, I can work just as hard sitting at home, spend half the money I spend on education and make twice as more. But I still think it is worth it. Though Internet Marketing is great and I certainly love it, there is a certain risk that you cant quite foresee, but it doesn't mean that the risk is not there. The smart thing to do would be to diversify so that you minimize that risk. I know it takes a long time before you become really good in one area. But most people who become good in one area, don't do anything after that just because they make enough money just doing that.

What do you guys think about this? I know many of the warriors do just Social Media Jobs full time and others purely SEO and Affliate Marketing and I am sure you make quite a lot of money. But have you guys diversified yet? If you haven't, don't you guys think that you are putting yourself in a huge risk?

 

internet marketing is in constant development, as everything.
if you learn how it's done today and never continue learning, of course that you will become obsolete in a few months or years, because your skills are no longer bringing results.
but i'm sure that most of the IM people are constantly learning new things and using new methods so there is no question if they will earn money in 5 years. only if internet disappears in 5 years, but I don't think so
maybe that job title will change. it won't be called social media marketer, but whatever the new name is, I'm sure many of current social media marketers will adapt to new forms of IM.

having. said that, business or any other education is always a good thing, so your decision to give your money in formal education certainly isn't a bad one.

 

Who knows? Anything could happen. Social media will more than likely include at least 20% of a human resource manager's, activity directory's or promotional manager's job description.

 

Risk is there in any field. So, Social media Career is nothing special. If you improve update yourself continuously while social media it taking transition into any other form, you won't find any difficulty.

 

May be, if google turns itself into a completely voice based search engine, which seems highly unlikely.

 

I know what you mean because I have thought about it. The good think about affiliate marketing is that if you really learn to earn money online you can earn as much as you want. And what you can do to be prepare in case of the risk in the Internet is besides study for your master degree also save. If you are earning tons of money online save. Save and buy a house, or something that you can rent. You will earn passive income and again save and repeat. You can still earn a lot of money online and at the same time taking precautions and getting prepare for the future.

 

It all depends on how much you're making. I don't know who "she" is, but I don't think she knows what she is talking about. Tell Shane Dawson or Shaytards or Annoying Orange on YouTube that Social Media is not a job. They'll laugh at you. It's a full time career with endless possibilities.

 

@OP copy pasting is not a carreer either.

IM is a very viable carreer option, sticking to just some old social media doctrines without updates is also; a very bad one at that.

 

At the end of the day, all of us must change along side the changes that are happening around the world. Because change is the only constant.

I think the day the internet would become obsolete is the day we stop having electricity. Although i do agree that in Internet Marketing (IM), one should not put everything in one basket, but there is nothing wrong with being super good at one thing. The key for me is just to earn money and save for a rainy day.

The money that i earn i use to buy real good bars. Those that cost tons of money. because i believe that real gold is something of real value, instead of just notes or figures in the bank. So my suggestion would be to use and save the money that you earn wisely. But learning an extra skill after you have mastered one is definitely a safe thing to do.

 

Just about everything on the net is coming or going. Social media will evolve to something very different in a few years.
The most stable way to earn a living on the net is to build a list and use email marketing.
Email has stood the test of time, and no doubt will continue to.
The money is in the list!

 

I think you can make anything in life a career. Oprah Winfrey made a career through helping people, Ellen Degeners made a career through laughing, people make careers out of kicking around a ball. If internet marketing is something you love, if persuading people or sharing with people something for their benefit, gives you fulfillment and you get paid for, why not. You are doing something that impacts the world. If there were not internet marketers, which I'm not saying it's best job, but imagine our world and entrepreneurs with out it.

 

You can make it anything you want it to

 

OP, you're behind man. Catch up. We've know this for decades. PS. Anyone looking for a "career" has their head on wrong. Milk it, make a fortune, keep milking it until it's bone dry.

 

I agree with you that we should never have our eggs in one basket...otherwise when something goes down or changes drastically it could really hurt. Been there done that and it wasn't fun.

 

Let me tell you one thing, technology is changning at such a fast pace that what's new nowadays may become old.

Right now Facebook and Google are on top, but after 10 years will they remain on top. You can't guarantee that, not even their founders.

So, stay in this tough competitive Technology world, just stay updated with latest technology updates.

 

You never know what's going to happen, but either way internet marketing as a whole isn't going anywhere any time soon. Will it be changing? Sure it will, just like things always do, but it's unlikely that those changes will cause your experience in social media management to become irrelevant all together.

To answer your question though, yes, I do believe that it's important to diversify one's skill set.

 

People place to much importance in trying to make something a "career". Nowadays people are expected to change 'careers" at least 5 times in their life as opposed to the 50 years ago where it was only expected to happen once or twice. With IM, it is a continuous learning curve that is ever changing and will continue to, A job title now may be non existent in the future. I would not worry to much about whether something is a career or not because either way you are gaining skills that can be applied to many different fields.

 

I hope you will learn the meaning of risk during your master education. You know something about risks ("risk diversification is good") but your knowledge level is not enough when it comes to analyze a real world business. Risk in terms of business is a broad term to explain here. There are some different conflicting philosophies behind the term of "risk" that make so hard to understand it correctly. In short, "business risk" is a little bit relative. It can change depending on where you are looking at it from. It's an integral part of the processes while you are about to set business goals, strategies and tactics. By the way, I am a business graduate.

Social media and internet marketing are not identical at all. It's just a small set (in math) belongs to > set of internet > set of marketing. It will not be end of the World if one day social media disappears. It will be the same for internet marketing as well though I think internet marketing will live longer than social media.

If you like a business, do it. The biggest risk would be to work on something that you don't like. Life is short to worry. We don't have any control over most of the events around us. You must be capable to adapt to changes when social media dies rather than thinking about the risks. Whichever business you choose, eventually some unknown events will happen in the future. We can't escape from the risks. If we could, there would be no loser in the World. You will make losses and then you will learn how to earn. Don't go much into details. Just do what you want and live your own life in full with a combination of losses and gains.

 

This statement sounds like all the statements that I have read telling people that things are not what they think it would. Remember all those people that these new things would not be possible in the future. I personally feel that someday there will be people who will study all about social media or professions in social media and all the online world will continue to flourish. I might be wrong, we might go back to sticks and stone age but I think with all the innovative minds out there things just keep getting new. You guys might wanna hear again what people said to people who were pursuing weird thngs and were thought to be stupid, but as Einstein said - the difference of stupidity and Genius is that Genius has its limits.

 

I agree with you Jglenn, we could be back to the stone age quicker than we might like to think! Thanks for the post!