Ink

Whitney Mathews gets paid to blog, tweet and Facebook.

Last fall, she nabbed a job as social-media strategist for The World Co. in Lawrence, which oversees a cable provider, TV station and newspaper. Consider Mathews, 25, the social-media liaison between The World Co. and its customers.

Sounds like a cushy job, right? Not exactly.

“I’m immersed in the online world for 10, 11 hours a day,” Mathews said. On her desk is a laptop, computer monitor and iPhone. She needs all three screens to fence in the plethora of programs and applications she runs constantly at work: Facebook, e-mail, Google chat, a music player, spreadsheets, photo- and video-editing programs and Twitter, to name a few.

“It’s media overload on a daily basis,” Mathews said.

In the past four years, social-networking use among adults skyrocketed. According to an October report by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 46 percent of online American adults are plugged in to a social network such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. That’s up from 8 percent in 2005.

Most of us started using social networking to stay in touch with friends. But in the past year or two, social media has morphed into a powerful tool at work.

Take Mathews’ job, for example: It didn’t exist before last fall.

On a typical day, Mathews catches up with industry blogs, responds to tweets, plans online contests and giveaways, and uploads content to the Lawrence Journal-World’s Facebook page. Mostly, she learns as she goes, but Mathews does have a background in this stuff.

Two years ago, she was working as a producer at a local TV station when she began experimenting with new ways to tell stories online. In 2008, she began live blogging and posting video from, say, election events and basketball games. And she began using social networking more and more. Tweeting and blogging became second nature. About 46 percent of information-technology professionals say social networking has business value, according to a 2009 study by Internet-security company FaceTime. The workers said that social networking improved communication among employees, helped with marketing, amped up productivity and generated sales leads.

Not buying it? You’re not alone. About 12.5 percent of those IT professionals said social media provided zero benefits at work.

Chris Kovac, 34, used to think that way.

“I was a social-media naysayer,” Kovac said.

He said he thought to himself, “ Who wants to know if I’m drinking coffee right now or if I’m going to the movies later? ”

Kovac, who’s now the director of social influence at Kansas City marketing agency Nicholson Kovac, eventually discovered social media’s business potential. It began with a tweet: Kovac posted something about needing a dining-room table. A few minutes later, the vice president of a local furniture company replied, offering to take Kovac on a personal tour of the showroom.

“Wow,” Kovac said. “How compelling is that?”

Now it’s his job to guide clients through the social-media jungle. Only, he doesn’t really have a map — no one does.

Kovac said most jobs in social media came about 18 to 24 months ago, when Facebook and Twitter reached a “tipping point” in popularity. Twitter use exploded 1,382 percent between February 2008 and February 2009, according to Nielsen media research company. Facebook grew 228 percent in the same period.

So because social-media jobs are in their infancy — and because this technology is evolving — this new form of social work “can be scary at times,” Kovac said.

Especially if you can’t tell whether all those tweets and status updates are doing any good.

“I think a lot of companies have no idea — that’s why they’re hiring people who are knee-deep (in social media) every day,” said Chase Hawkins, a 24-year-old Kansas City entrepreneur who co-developed an event-based social-networking site, Zappn.

Workers who specialize in social media are sometimes labeled as “social-media gurus,” a title Hawkins can’t stand.

“A lot of people in Kansas City love to talk about social media and how it works. And then there are the people that actually do it,” Hawkins said.

Even companies that haven’t hired full-time social-media gurus are finding ways to incorporate social networking. For example, Boulevard Brewing Co. has four employees — one brewer and three marketers — who keep up with blogs and update Twitter throughout the workday. Likewise, several employees at Hallmark take turns blogging, tweeting and Facebooking.

Small businesses do it, too: Celina Tio owns her own restaurant, Julian, in Brookside. She tweets several times a day about restaurant news, specials, or what she’s eating. When followers tweet her, she tweets back.

“One of my followers came in for dinner, and I recognized his name on the books. So I went to his table and said, ‘Nice to meet you in person, fellow tweeter!’ He and his table were surprised that I do the tweeting myself, and that I made the connection to his name and went out of my way to meet him.”

That kind of instant gratification is rare in social-media work, mostly because it’s hard to measure the effectiveness of a tweet or Facebook post.

Shannon Schlappi, 34, wants to solve this problem.

Schlappi, who lives near Independence and runs a Kansas City social-media marketing firm called Locker Partner, is developing a site called RockDex that measures a band’s or brand’s buzz — positive and negative — in the social-media realm.

Say you’re in a band. If you subscribe to RockDex (the price depends on the size of your company and how often you use RockDex), you can use the site to look up how many times fans play a certain song on your MySpace page, or how many people tweeted your band’s name in the past month. You can even view a map of the United States (or the world) to see where those social networkers are talking about you most, then use that information to chart a tour route.

Schlappi said companies have to pay close attention to what’s going on in the social-media world if they want to stay relevant.

“To me, this is the future of business,” Schlappi said.

“This is absolutely mandatory — embrace it, or you’re gone.”

But not everyone sees it his way. Schlappi said he thinks more companies block or restrict Facebook than don’t.

He added that those companies could really benefit from lifting those restrictions, as long as they lay down a few ground rules.

The big one: Be really, really careful.

“In the online social realm, comments are forever and public,” Schlappi said, “so making sure that (employees) act in the proper manner at all times is key. But again, that’s what you expect of good employees anyway.”

Some people have to learn this lesson the hard way.

Remember last year, when former Kansas City Chief Larry Johnson was booted from the team for complaining about his coach and making homophobic remarks on Twitter?

Venting about your job online is never a good idea. Just ask Mathews.

In 2005, Mathews was working at a Kansas City gym.

“I blogged about my plan to quit. Maybe with some not-so-nice words to share about my gym and my co-workers,” Mathews said.

“A week later, I was fired for it in front of one of my mom’s neighbors at the front desk. It was humiliating, humbling and infuriating all at the same time, but it taught me a huge lesson. … You better watch your ass if you’re having a bad day.”

Kovac recommended using a LinkedIn account to connect with co-workers and peers and a Facebook account for friends and family. Ne’er the twain shall meet.

“When you start to blur the lines between professional and personal lives, it’s like opening up Pandora’s box,” Kovac said.

Another drawback to social work: Being constantly plugged in can wear you down.

“I cherish the days I don’t have to pick up my laptop for 12 hours,” Mathews said.

Even during the workday, she consciously disconnects herself. She doesn’t bring her phone to meetings, and she writes her to-do list the old-fashioned way, with legal pad and pen.

But Mathews is, by nature, a social person. So she can’t go too long before she gets that itch to plug in.

“There’s a stereotype about social media, that it’s all nerds behind computers. But the critical part of social media is being social,” Matthews said.

“People really want to connect with the people in their communities more than ever — this just gives them one more way to do it.”