Leafing through the Major Players Autumn/Winter 2007 Salary Survey the other day, it was comforting to see that salaries are mostly in-line with what you’d expect.

The hyper-inflation that preceed the 2001 bust, doesn’t appear to be happening yet. Or at least, not when the survey was conducted.

One stat that did leap off the page was the category titled, “Social Media Specialist”. The reason it leapt out was the salary range, stated as £25k-£70k.

That’s a pretty hefty range, which could be assumed to relate to skills, experience and the seniority of the role. What this statistic illustrates, is how quickly the marketing industry has cottoned on to all things social. It also shows how early it is in the process, and how little the definitions of these roles must have in common to straddle that range of remuneration.

A quick check on Chinwag Jobs for roles mentioning “social media” (RSS flavour if you prefer) already shows a couple of dozen roles (as of 6th Dec ‘07), so clearly the response to the salary survey is being borne out by companies and consultancies searching for social medjia types.

More importantly, it’s not being ignored and dismissed as a new-fangled fad. Historically, Internet developments, search engine marketing for one, have been ignored by the mainstream until long after they’ve become established amongst the specialists. Let’s just hope that it’s not a case of,

Quick. Hire someone to do our Facebook stuff.

Instead of looking seriously at how companies can take advantage of the conversations that are happening on Facebook, Bebo, in forums, on Twitter…out there on the Internet.

Hopefully, it’s not a sudden land grab for companies trying to create a community on Facebook and instead looking at how they can position their company to take advantage of the conversational marketing that’s emerging off the back of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and the thousands of niche communities.