Ryan Holmes

Companies and managers that find a way to harness social media stand to gain.

Social media teams tend to be decentralized - a motley mix of in-house experts, off-site consultants and international partners. The result: Confusion, rogue tweets, and off-message posts are almost inevitable. The worst gaffes live on in social media infamy.

Certification programs for social media are blossoming as a response to the demand for more social media training. Both industry professionals and recent graduates are tapping into tactical training programs to help them stay up to date as the industry grows.

Since social networks gained popularity extremely rapidly, there had been a debate as to whether social media was a fad. There are countless pieces of evidence now proving the contrary, among them the explosion in Twitter growth and Facebook's public listing.

While social media skills were once a 'nice-to-have,' accreditation in the space is becoming a requirement for many of these job titles. Hiring managers and job seekers are realizing that printing stacks of resumes is turning passe, and social media is rising as the new way of generating real-time networking opportunities.

Social media is the future, with employers recognizing they need to start hiring people with the right skills.

Amongst high unemployment rates, a competitive job market and a shrinking global economy, the emerging social media industry only continues to grow.

Building outrageous expectations about the next big thing - be it a personal video chatting service or venue-based photo sharing app - can create all sorts of complications when things don't go as planned.

The basic idea of email has remained essentially unchanged since the first networked message was sent in 1971. And while email is great for one-on-one, formal correspondence, there are far better tools for collaboration.