With college graduations complete, and summer a time of reflection, this is when I am most often asked "how do I get a job in social media?" I often can't help folks find the job they want, nor do I have the time for all the cups of coffee proffered, but I can offer advice. This post is a summary of my best advice, including current and emerging skills for the field, what you need to know, and how to prepare to get a job in social media at a company or nonprofit organization.

I just returned from the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) energized and excited about where nonprofit technology practitioners think the field is heading. In this #15ntc roundup, I talk about the trends in nonprofit technology that I spotted at the conference, and why this is the year that nonprofit technology field jumped past "where are we now" to answer the question "where do we want to go next?"

The M&R 2014 Benchmarks Study is here! For the past eight years, M&R,with support from NTEN, has produced a study of email and fundraising benchmarks. This year's study looked at email (open rates, churn, clickthrough rates, list growth, response rates), online giving (email, other giving online, monthly vs. one-time gifts), website traffic (traffic growth and web gift rates), and social media (Facebook and Twitter fan size, growth, and frequency of posting) in 2013. What is interesting about this year's study isn't so much what is in it, but what it implies for the future of web communication.

Developing a syllabus for Social Media Strategy is extremely challenging. There are new books coming out every day, and it's difficult to keep up. There's a lot of so-called "required reading" for professionals in the field, for nonprofit connectors, and for social media change-makers. In the end, what makes you more effective in your work is what is most valuable. Ultimately, I designed the reading for the graduate Social Media Strategy course to include two required books for purchase, along with many blog posts, journal articles, slideshows, and book excerpts. This blog post is an inclusive list of what I did assign, along with many on the "wish list" for next time.

How would you begin to diagram an organization's readiness to engage in social media? In this post, I offer a conceptual diagram of the major internal and external elements to be considered when evaluating readiness. Further, I consider each element of the diagram and assign a value to it on a social media readiness continuum scale.