Let’s face it. With the current state of the economy, many people are looking for jobs these days. Don’t for a second believe the “official” unemployment rate of only 9% or so. While that is historically high, the real rate is much higher, probably in the range of 15 to 20%. The reason is not because there are no jobs available – there are, they just aren’t in the fields that people have traditionally looked for jobs, because technology has advanced to the point that the vast majority of job seekers just aren’t trained, or don’t have any skills in, the fields that are looking for employees. The United States has shipped most of the traditional, high-paying factory jobs out of the country, so about the only jobs available for the “common man” here are low-paying jobs in the service industry (i.e. fast food, retail stores, etc.).

I hate to say it, but the kind of jobs your parents may have been used to getting a generation ago are gone, probably forever. The good news is that with the explosion of social media in our society, many businesses realize that they need to have a presence in social media, but they don’t have either the time nor the skill to get involved personally, and to keep up with all the Facebook posts and Twittering that they could, or should, be doing to in order to promote their business and keep their name in the minds of their customers. For this reason social media marketing jobs and opportunities have materialized where they didn’t exist before. Watch this video here. Because there are a lack of people doing this for businesses, these businesses have become willing to hire people to do this type of “social media marketing” for them.

This is where you might find a great opportunity to do what you may already be doing a lot of anyway, and actually have FUN at your job too! Although this isn’t really a “technical” skill, if you’re reading this it’s probably already second-nature to you. I mean, how many times have you heard someone say, “If you can’t figure out how to use your computer or cell phone, just ask a 12-year-old!”? Older business owners simply aren’t up to speed on how to participate in today’s social media, and even if they were, they are really just too busy running their businesses to spend much time learning how to do any increasingly-important social media marketing. Most of these business owners are old-school. They can’t, and won’t, learn how to get busy with the new forms of advertising in today’s marketplace. The need is definitely there – the social media jobs marketplace has virtually created itself.