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10 June 2020

5 Careers For The Aspiring Media Professional

The media landscape has evolved tremendously from the times of Don Draper and David Ogilvy! Technology has transformed the way we consume media, creating a demand for digitally savvy media professionals that have to be adaptable and open to constant change.

Digital Senior shares with you 5 of the fastest-growing positions* in Singapore’s media scene, and some of the skills you’ll need to take on these jobs #likeaboss.

*Compiled with the help of LinkedIn’s 2018 and 2020 Singapore Emerging Job Reports

1) Creative Copywriter

Surely you’ve heard how Diamonds are Forever and may have borrowed Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan to motivate yourself. For these pithy slogans, you have copywriters to thank! These individuals are the brains behind ad copy—written content of a marketing and advertising nature that persuades and sells—spinning their magic for different channels and audiences for a wide variety of industries.

There is a growing demand for creative copywriters due to the digitalisation^[i] and the proliferation of social media. You’ll find them working as freelancers, in marketing and media agencies, or in-house for organisations.

To deliver their messages well, copywriters must be familiar with the platforms and people they write for. You can expect them to be well-versed in content marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

2) Content Specialists

Otherwise known as content marketers, content specialists are tasked to create shareable content that informs, educates and entertains a client’s or organisation’s target audiences. That’s not all, however: their content must also increase a brand’s awareness and reputation, helping to attract potential and even repeat customers over time!

Content specialists do a lot of writing for the online audience, with formats ranging from blog posts to emails to whitepapers. To create high-quality content they must possess a firm grasp of the language they write in, be social media savvy, and have a basic grasp of SEO that will help drive traffic to their work.

According to the 2018 Emerging Jobs in Singapore Report by Linkedin, “the role of content specialist is a top emerging job unique to [our] particular talent market”^[ii] due to our status as a regional hub for many international businesses. In fact, demand for content specialists grew three times between 2013-2017, cementing their positions in Singapore’s job landscape.

3) E-Commerce Specialist

Like shopping online? Well, you’re not alone! The E-Commerce industry is seeing a steady upward trend^[iii], with the Southeast Asian E-Commerce market expected to exceed US$150 billion in market share by 2025^[iv]! Coming in 12^th in LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs report for Singapore^[v], these experts in online sales strategies will be instrumental players in a retail business’s quest to grab a piece of the pie.

In charge of monitoring and optimising online sales performances, along with site activity, E-Commerce specialists execute digital marketing campaigns on social media and search engines. They also improve user experience with the help of data and findings. Proficiency in data visualisation, advertising campaigns, web metrics and predictive analytics help them do their jobs with aplomb.

4) Social Media Specialist

With 4.6 million active social media users in Singapore, social media marketing has come to be a crucial part of a business’s efforts to increase brand awareness and drive sales. This is where a social media specialist comes in!

Acting as the voice of a brand, these creative minds help to develop and implement social media marketing strategies that encompass a variety of social networks. You’ll see them creating, scheduling, and posting content on the brand’s social media accounts, managing publishing calendars, monitoring and optimising social media activity through feedback and established Key Performance Indexes (KPIs), as well as responding to community members. Apart from great organisation skills, social media specialists also need to be comfortable with social media analytics and project management.

5) Community Specialist

You’ve probably interacted with community specialists before when commenting on a brand’s Facebook page or chatted to ‘moderators’ of your favourite game’s Discord group. There’s a high chance that these people are community specialists, whose roles are to represent these brands and to engage with their communities. On social media, this could entail answering questions, finding new users, replying to existing community members, listening to the community and identifying their needs, as well as organising social events. Offline, they do the same via events like stakeholder meetings and roadshows.

Community specialists must be adept in social media marketing and event management. They also require good communication and networking skills and should know how to conduct sentiment tools analysis.

Find any of these roles exciting, like how we do? To help all you aspiring media professionals, we asked Assistant Professor Jiow Hee Jhee, Programme Director of the BSc (Hons) Digital Communications & Integrated Media (DCIM) offered by the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), to shed some light on how to prepare for a career in the media industry.

“As society gets more connected online, we are seeing three areas of focus,” he shares with us. What are they?

1. Digital Web Analytics

“By interacting with others online, data analytics has become key to understanding the society we live in. Data analytics helps us to develop insights and messages, and also monitor their effectiveness.”

Bearing this in mind, SIT’s DCIM degree makes sure that students are adept in digital web metrics, digital web analytics, and ways to present data creatively. With every career listed requiring data analysis skills of some sort, it’d be helpful to pick up skills in digital web analytics in your own free time or to choose a course that offers related modules!

2. Integrated Media Management

Assistant Professor Jiow also shares how companies have been engaging their audience via integrated means, which requires today’s graduates to have skills to manage media holistically across multiple channels. Don’t forget to acquire a thorough understanding of the platforms you’ll use too, so that your messages will be distributed both efficiently and effectively!

3. Digital Media Production

Learning how to create content will make you versatile and ready for careers across the media industry—which is why SIT places an emphasis on Digital Media Production, teaching the fine art of documentary making and interactive media. Here’s an interesting insight from Assistant Professor Jiow: short-form films have been trending in today’s new media landscape!

Raring to go? We hope you are! We thank Assistant Professor Jiow and SIT for sharing these insights with us, and wish you a great start as you turn your aspirations into reality!