The CMO Club polls its members each week and the most recent question put to the group was:

What is your top priority for hiring?

Social Marketing was at the top of the list with 39.2%  with comments such as “The biggest gap I have is Social Marketing expertise. We all know the basics, it’s applying new social networking capabilities to our marketing mix.” and “A few years back Industry expertise mattered more. Now it’s the science of customer engagement. I can always teach them about the industry.”

When asked what they’d do differently in 2010, 64 %  said they planned to increase social media spending, and 72% of those CMOs not currently overseeing social media initiatives planned to create some.

Pete Krainik, founder of the CMO Club, even suggested this will be the year that CMOs failing to grasp social media will be fired.

Krainik predicts that social media will be an enterprise-wide mainstay by 2011, but it seems like most marketers are still trying to wrap their heads around it all.

Are we seeing a similar trend in PR?  Is your job at risk if you don’t master social media skills this year?  The PRSA Counselors Academy has this on their top 3 items for PR  professionals in 2010. The PR And Social Media report from Econsultancy tells us that only 13% of companies are ‘very satisfied’ with the level of social media service they get from their PR agency.

A quick Twitter poll of PR and Communication professionals shows that about 70% of them think that PR professionals and PR agencies that don’t master social media will lose out.

PR executive recruitment specialists report that they are seeing the same trend as the CMO Club – social media skill is the number one requirement for landing a PR job today.  (Yest most PR schools don’t teach it.)

And just knowing how to put up a Fscebook page or a Twitter feed is not enough.  You have to know how to implement the right social actions for your situation and blend them seamlessly into your PR campaigns. You have to be able to build a community and actually engage with them – not just use social media as another broadcast medium

What can you do to improve your social media skills?

• Learn how to plan a social media strategy
• Attend the Social Media Club meetings in your area
• Follow PR thought leaders on Twitter:
• Subscribe to this blog

What would you advise PR people to do to improve their skills?

Image Credit: Desmond  Kavanaugh