Should Social Media Jobs Accept Local Applicants Only?

Last week, I Tweeted a blurb about the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looking for a social media intern. Kathleen Danielson asked a question that’s relevant to any jobseeker in the Web 2.0 era: “Do I have to be in St. Louis?”

Or, put more broadly: If you’re hiring me to perform a social media role, should I be required to live in the city where your headquarters are?

I touched base with Kurt Greenbaum, Director of Social Media at the Post-Dispatch, to get his thoughts. Here’s some of what he had to say:

While there is certainly much that someone could do remotely in this job, there are two pieces of it that make it important to be physically present:

- One aspect of this job involves going into the community to promote our social networking site, MySTLtoday.com. It has just launched within the last three weeks. By promote, I mean meet with individuals and organizations who might have an interest in participating, coach them in how to use it, encourage them to participate and highlight their content when they do. I have had three such meetings in the past two days and will be leaving for another one shortly this morning.

- A second aspect is to help coach people in our own newsroom who are new to the notion of social media. I have literally shown people how to send their first text message in order to let them participate in Twitter coverage. There are plenty of similar examples of how I personally — and with help, more effectively — need to bring my colleagues along and show them how these tools can help their journalism.

You need a genuine familiarity with the community to succeed in social media. As Kurt put it, you have to live in St. Louis to appreciate gooey buttercake, the Highway 40 commuter nightmare, and a distinctly St. Louis obsession with knowing people’s high school alma maters.

I also wanted to hear the social media community’s thoughts, so I posed the question on Twitter. Here’s some of the response:

@jesseliebman: The whole nature of Social Media is connecting with any and everyone. Therefore, no, he doesn’t need to be in the target city

@budesigns: There would be certain advantages to being local (esp for internal client face-time), but I wouldn’t require it.

@nickfooter: As long as the intern has the ability to get online, No. He might not understand the culture of his target completely though.

@brianbaute: I say yes. I’ve found it tough to be part of the Charlotte SM community while missing tweetups, btynebiz lunch, wordcamp, etc.

@mc4849: Remote resource could support a ‘name’ like @ColonelTribune but @jamesjanega @acmaurer more in-touch because they are local. Acknowledge that SocMedia is greater than just Twitter, but authenticity sometimes requires face-time to get the right info.

So what say you? Can a social media job be done remotely, or should it be tied to a geographic location? Somewhere in between?

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