Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch

About a month ago, I wrote about three career tracks that won't exist in a few years - at least as I see it. Now let's take a look at three emerging digital jobs that will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

The Chief Customer Experience Officer (and those who work for her)

Want to know if a company is a good witch or a bad witch? It's easy. The web knows. Google, the media and online communities are littered with tales of companies that have exemplary products and customer service. However, it's often easier to find those that have been vilified for the opposite. That's the thesis of Pete Blackshaw's forthcoming book - Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Here's an experiment. For fun, enter any company into this special Google search engine I set up and let me know what you find.

Brands are increasingly recognizing that customer experience is everything. They will follow the model that Zappos and others set in optimizing online and offline channels. Digital touch points, for many companies, will be the most critical. Since August 2006, customer experience job listings increased 57%, according to simplyhired. (User experience is directly related and equally important and I believe will increasingly become more integrated with the total customer experience.)

"customer Experience" trends

"customer experience" jobs

Digital Storytellers

Harvard Business Review last month noted that most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. "If they can’t, neither can anyone else," HBR posits. That's not good.

Remember, much of the developed world is coping with The Attention Crash. If a company can't tell pithy, authentic stories in the right places at the right time to the right people, someone else will. For more on this, I highly recommend the book Made to Stick.

Search may change that. Google is downplaying SEO and increasingly rewarding those who create quality content. This includes the pros/media, amateurs and brands. Blended Search - which integrates noteworthy videos, news and images with web results - is winning over users, according to Jupiter Research.

Net, as Jason Calacanis notes, there is a big market for people who know how to create or cultivate compelling content that pulls in people. To that end my employer is starting up Edelman Studios - a virtual content house that will identify online talent and pair them with brands. Many in the Hollywood community, ex-journalists and advertising/PR creatives will orient their careers in such a direction. Don't be left behind. There's plenty of need here.

Super Crunchers

Here's another book recommendation for your summer reading list (sorry, I read a lot so my clients don't have to). It's called Super Crunchers. In the book, the authors explain through case studies how companies that are able to mine through mountains of data and make it work for them usually win. Another great book on this topic is Moneyball, which I have written about before.

The digital space is the most addressable media and marketing platform ever. However, most marketers are not “quants” and data is largely under utilized by many companies.

Data mining and visualization tools reduce risk, make business more efficient and measurable. Great rewards will come to those who know how to dig into data and make sense of it all and can parse that into insights that help companies optimize the dollars they put online. Be that guy or gal.

Those are three emerging careers on my list. What's on yours? The one topic I did not cover is developers, who I suspect will continue to remain in high demand for years to come.

Comments

[whitneymcn]

Regarding #3: A couple of days ago I was talking with a friend who recently started as head of user experience for a large offline/online publisher.

He's now met a few of the internal people who were gunning for the position, and came to the realization that the main differentiating factor between him and the people that should have had the inside track for the job is that my friend is analytics obsessed. One of his recurring themes in the interview process was that "data drives design" -- that unless you're tracking, measuring, and analyzing, you're designing "user experience" based largely on abstract ideas or hunches.

[Richard Millington]

Great post. These three roles pinpoint most of the work I do, and i agree, they are very much seperate roles.

However, what would you say is the difference between a customer experience officer and a community manager though? Should a company have both?

The idea and tasks of Digital Storytellers I think are spot on, but the name is awful. It's where most of my work lies at the moment Maybe Digital Content Managers or Digital Directors?

[Carter F Smith]

Great Google Search tool, Steve -- I posted it to The Conversation on Comcast - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10320222023

[I Am GHOST BLOGGER - Brad Williamson]

Hey, hey! You call it "Digital Storytelling," others call it "Digital Biographer" - potAtoes, potOtoes - but one thing is for certain...

Public figures, or people who strive to be public figures, who don't have the time or know-how to establish a prominent online identity for themselves, need digital biographers, like myself, to help co-produce their digital biography for them.

I wish I could say my website, " IAmGHOSTBLOGGER.com - Your Digital Biographer," was complete right now, so you guys could check out my perspectives on this emerging digital service, but it's about a week away from completion. But when it's finally fired up, I urge you to check out the article "GHOST BLOGGER REVEALS ALL! - The Secrets of a Successful Digital Biography." It'll give you a pretty solid perspective on what I think about all this digital storytelling business.

To those professionals whose careers were mentioned in this article, I wish you all great successes!

[Joshua]

You have done a good work on it.

[Torley]

I find it intriguing to see what new roles become needed in our knowledge-driven economy, Steve, and I enjoyed this article peeking into the future — but I wish you had given more definition behind what each one of these careers does. One gets somewhat of an idea from following the links, but something like "Digital Storyteller" is nebulously open to a wide variety of interpretations without more specifics. :)

[Eric S]

One position I'd like to add (and perhaps because it's what I'm doing these days) is the Web Producer. There's a real dearth of individuals that can carry a site effectively all the way through from inception to completion, keeping things on schedule and budget, while keeping teams creatively juiced and flexible. Great Web Producers keep web-ware from becoming vaporware.

[facebook]

good news

thank you for informations.

facebook

[PepperDigital]

Great post today.

It will be interesting to see how the C Suite responds to these digital positions in terms of the value of digital programs.

The proof will be in the pudding, and it will be exciting to watch and take note of how these trends evolve.

[Richard Stacy]

Spot on with careers number one and two and these people are going to work in (or run) the Conversation Department and the Story Department - which is what the Marketing and/or Corporate Comms Departments will morph into.

[Outtanames999]

Not that impressed with your "search engine."

Try these queries instead for more meaningful results.

For the negative:

+"customer service" +(suck OR complaint OR no OR refuse) +"some company name or industry"

For the positive:

+"customer service" +(good OR helped OR yes) +"some company name or industry"

Then compare counts.

[Harro!]

Cool. Harro falls under the super cruncher category.

Terence.