What’s More Important: WHO Owns Social Media Within an Organization or WHY It Matters?
Category: Shannon Masterson, Social Media, Trends
There’s been a debate brewing for the last several years, one that Forrester Research had hoped to help settle once and for all with the 2009 release of the results from its "Global Social Media Planning Survey." The results of this study were designed to give companies insight into the ways that resources are organized around social media, and, it was hoped, would clearly indicate how social media should be administrated within organizations. It seemed that after more than 40% of companies said they used a cross-functional team to manage their social media that cross-functional teams would become the default. Instead, the document further encouraged dialogue about WHO actually “owns” social media- whether it is Marketing, PR, Customer Service, Legal, or a hybrid of all of the departments.
In the May 17, 2010 article, "Which Department Owns Social Media," published on Mashable.com, the question was raised again. This article also cited a survey from 2009, however, the majority of companies reporting indicated that their social media activity was “owned” by their digital marketing team, a significantly smaller group indicated that their PR team managed their social media initiatives, when a slightly smaller number still said that they use a cross-functional team.
The reasons for this divergence are multi-fold. To begin, the expanding business role of social media does nothing to help clarify its position:
- Marketing relies on social media to create buzz and inform their consumers.
- PR relies on social media to create a good perception of their company.
- Customer Service relies on social media to address and solve issues from consumers, or to gather feedback on products and services.
- Individual employees may use social media internally to achieve day-to-day results in their job, however externally they rely on social media sites to connect with friends, express their opinions, and find out information on products and events.
It is used with regularity by companies externally to promote products and events, solve customer issues, announce awards and other news, and often provides a forum for their customers to do the same. There is also the popular, but frowned upon realm of stealth marketing, which employs social media to a marked degree through clandestine blog posts and product reviews on consumer sites. Because of its potentially disparate focus, it is important for many companies to impose ‘controls’ on the types of social interaction their company has.
Employees also have their own personal social media accounts, and while they might not tweet about the fabulous new product the company’s developed, they may talk about their icky boss, smelly co-worker, or their “ice cream paint job”, and all of those comments impact the company image- or open the company up to legal action.
Within those two fields lies the answer as to WHY it might be important to clarify who owns social media- or at least who owns what parts of social media. Having a cogent social media policy helps to curb any errant behavior on the part of your employees and solidifies your company message. Within each company, those “owners” might be responsible for oversight and enforcement of the organization’s policy, as well as articulating the salient points to be reinforced at any given time. When social media is opened to everyone, however, it is possible to reach people within the market that might benefit from your product or service, but who fall outside of the traditional scope of your demographic. (Think about the variety of people bound into the social networks of your CEO, mail room clerk, PR specialist, customer service representative, etc.)
So, while the WHO of who owns social media within an organization mightn’t be clear, and is best left up to the individual organization to define using strategic goals or organizational philosophy, the WHY has common purpose across companies, and is the more important question of the two.
What you can do:
- Develop a Social Media Strategy and quickly follow it up with a Social Media Policy- this will give you the Why and What when it comes to social media. It will also help to protect your company’s brand.
- Create a Social Media Team – defining this who should take into account your social media goals. You could use a cross-divisional team or resources form a single department such as marketing or public relations.
- Get to work- use your social media goals and your team to implement creative campaigns for your company.
- Call Square Root Interactive – we can help you integrate your chosen social media pathways directly into your website, painlessly, effortlessly, and seamlessly!
Sources: Forrester Research, Mashable.com, WeAreSocial.net
Posted By: Shannon Masterson | Date Published: 7.28.2010 | Comments (0)