Finding Social Media Talent for your organization

Hugh Macleod said it pretty well with his cartoon (above).  There are a lot of experts out there, so how do you find the right person for your brand?  Do you even need someone internal to

, or can your digital agency do the heavy lifting (or all the lifting for that matter).

David Armano , SVP at Edelman Digital, just wrote a great piece for the Harvard Business Review about ways to find talent for your company's

.  Tapping internal resources to re-train, recruit friends and contacts, and promote the brand are central to his thoughts and I tend to agree.  However, this is easier said than done.

In large orgs, even knowing who your employees

can be a challenge, let alone having them naturally promote your agenda in a specific social network.  The example I'll use: maybe a certain Vice President is a superb networker, and his or her contacts on LinkedIn are vast.  He's connected to all kinds of talent. He is. Does that mean that HR or others with a vested recruiting interest can tap that network?  Nope.  That's his.  Now does it benefit everyone (including this VP) to share certain specific things with his vast network, like new high-level job postings, etc.  Absolutely.  The VP gets the cache of being an influencer and connector within their network, and it works for everyone.

Part of the challenge is that HR or Talent recruiting or Employee Relations may not have the expertise or technology savvy (or even the

) to be able to identify this leader, and reach out to them.  Really, the education has to start with those in need.

This applies to marketers as well.  A brand marketer, though knowledgeable, may not be the best person to translate brand decisions or expectations into the language of the social web.  Sometimes you need expertise to manage the channel and educate the stakeholders, so that the stakeholders can concentrate "on driving the car" not on "how a car works".