Why Social Media Will Help Us All Get Along (Better)
It is one of the biggest questions you will hear in any open forum on Social Media: Which department owns social media? I wanted to outline my thoughts here and summarize some of the key sides of the debate.
While attending the SocialMediaPlus conference in Philadelphia on May 25th, I listened to the famous Frank Eliason from @ComcastCares. In his purely interactive session, Frank received this question: Do you see social media creating a convergence of marketing, PR, and customer service? Frank answered that he did not believe these areas would “converge”. He described the continuing need for our departments to perform our specialized tasks. But then he concluded his answer with the statement that really stuck with me and created a number of questions from my Twitter followers:
I believe social media will create more “compression around the customer” than “convergence across departments”. ~Frank Eliason
Christina Warren did an excellent job in covering this issue in her post “Which Department Owns Social Media” on Mashable. She described how in a recent survey, 35% of respondents reported that Digital Marketing managed their “social media resources”, 21% of respondents reported that PR teams managed them, and 19% said it was managed through a cross functional team. She even references Frank and @ComcastCares as an example of Customer Service folks doing some PR. She concludes her post by suggesting that social media should be a company-wide affair that no department “owns.”
Shel Holtz, who also spoke at SocialMediaPlus, recently wrote this article: “Study: PR wins social media ownership battle”. The post states that “PR trumps marketing when it comes to controlling the social media budget and strategy”. He references the Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) study which states that PR wins the large majority of control over social media budgets in slightly over 25% of the respondents vs. only 9% for marketing. The post states “the relatively non-commercial” nature of PR efforts and measurement efforts as the reasons for the results of the study.
Finally, the post from Daniel Flamberg, “Who Owns Social Media Monitoring”, suggests marketing should orchestrate social media for the organization and bring together a “collective” of functional silos in marketing, PR, and across our agencies to add value to marketing and communication activities. While Daniel is focused on monitoring, I fundamentally agree with him that this is an opportunity to achieve the promise of integrated marketing and communications.
In the end, I think Frank got it just right. No one will “win” and no one will “own” social media in the same way that no one owns the customer. One group that is often left out of these conversations is the sales team who may have the most to gain from well-executed social strategies. As I’ve stated before, we are all in our roles to help our companies get and keep customers (sales). If social media can drive each of us to compress our focus down to direct customer needs, available through social media, then we all win. And if we can focus on these common needs than maybe we’ll just all get along a little better.
Michael Brenner is the author of B2B Marketing Insider and serves as Sr. Director of Integrated Marketing for SAP. Michael's blog is dedicated to sharing the ideas, topics and marketing strategies that drive real results like sales, leads, and higher customer loyalty. Follow online at http://www.B2BMarketingInsider.com Follow on Twitter: @brennermichael @B2BMktgInsider
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“One group that is often left out of these conversations is the sales team who may have the most to gain from well-executed social strategies. As I’ve stated before, we are all in our roles to help our companies get and keep customers (sales).”
As a Sales Rep, I am very active on Social Media (Twitter, FB, Linkedin, amongst others) and have found it beneficial to not only manage company reputation but 1) meet others in the industry 2) develop relationships 3) get referrals from those relationships
In the end, I think every company can benefit in some way from social media, as long as every employee understands their company’s value proposition and long term goals.
Hi Ryan. I never forget my sales friends
And thanks for your comments. Social Media is great for the things you mention and the link to sales is too often forgotten.
I’m noticing these days that many corporate people are overly concerned about what department social media should reside in and who should “own” it. It’s like worrying about what department “owns” email. I think it’s an unnecessary obsession. Social Media is a tool that everyone in a business should “own” as long as there are widely understood guidelines about proper behaviour to represent your company online.
Hi Cindy,
I couldn’t agree more. You touched on the very inspiration I had for writing the post. Thanks for stopping by and for your comment!
Best, Michael
This is great, Michael.
As a technical communicator, however, I’m disappointed that the documentation department wasn’t mentioned as part of the mix. The user guides and help for a company’s products can do a lot to build trust and goodwill (or undermine them, if not done well). Additionally, we’re finding that some really good documentation comes (via social media) from the customer community, not from the subject-matter experts who work for the company.
My colleagues and I have been talking about the convergence of marketing and documentation, and the need for the documentation team to be active in social media. See my recent article for more.
Hi Larry,
Thanks for coming to the site and taking the time and effort to read and comment. I agree with you that documentation is an important part of the customer experience and should have been mentioned. I still believe the point of the post holds true: that focusing on common goals will allow groups like marketing and your team “compress” your focus to common customer needs.
Your link mentions that users who are looking for help do not come to your website looking for a brand experience. But if they are looking for help and cannot find it, they will have a bad experience for sure. And your company (or brand) will suffer as a result. I think some of this may be semantics but it is an important point: the companies that align to customer needs and cast aside the obstacle of internal silos will win in the marketplace.
Sometime ago I wrote a piece on the need for (what we’d now call) social media orchestration. It was looking at the role of the “business designer” – someone who can coordinate a multi-disciplined response/action across the organisation:
http://www.servantofchaos.com/2008/09/social-media-sa.html
But I do like Frank’s insight – compression around the customer. Exactly. That’s where the value exchange lies.
Hi Michael
I take the point – but surely this is about Stakeholder engagement not just customers. Everyone individual in the organisation needs to be thinking about what they benefit by engaging with this communication medium.
This new media is as much for HR, Research/Insight, Corporate strategy/planning and Finance as it is for Integrated Marketing, surely?
I bet you’d agree!
Kind regards
Rebecca
Thanks Gavin! And I really see your point on the need for this “Business Designer” role orchestrating across the organization. As some of the other comments reflect, the fact is that social media touches all aspects of a company and surely this kind of coordination will demand new roles and new skills.
Hi Rebecca,
You are clearly right. We need to consider our stakeholders including all employees across the organization. I believe one of the key objectives of a social media marketing “strategist” is to create training and employee engagement programs for the entire staff. So thank you for the future post idea!
While social media is still new and untouched territory for some companies, others seem to find somewhat or very successful way of implementing it within their organizations. I think the winners are generally known as to ask first. Many companies are skeptical of social media or not sure where to insert it in their org chart. Whether it is marketing or communications/pr, someone needs to still claim ownership and do something about it. We all know that if you don’t do anything about it, you’ll lose something valuable which could end up being your customers – loyal customers.
I agree that PR should own social media but I believe in collaboration amongst the marketing, sales, customer care, e-commerce and human resources/talent management teams. A centralized team of people from each group should form a core SM team that can work within the organization as catalyst. A leader within the communications, PR team should be selected to manage the core team projects. Why? We know that marketing folk are all about ROI so they will always measure the success or failure of SM against dollar amount and they will end up missing the point with social media. Communications on the other hand can stay as the trust agent and keep everyone aligned with their goals and objectives. SM success is not about bringing the $ to the organization, it’s about creating a transparent organization, brand and a company that is open to listen, learn from mistakes, and cater customers, employees and future brand advocates with open dialogue.
Thanks Gulsah for your reply. And I totally agree that some functional area needs to take the lead and then orchestrate across PR, marketing, customer service, sales, HR, etc. I also like your point about openness and dialogue which in my opinion is really the main reason we are seeing this revolution take place.
I think this is an interesting one. I like the Coca Cola policy which came out recently – I think it is important that businesses think about how it impacts across all the potential touchpoints from a process perspective – this will then give insight for that particular company where the most impact is likely to reside. I also think it is important that someone has ownership/ an overview across the business of how different departments are using so that there is a more strategic perspective which avoids duplication of work and confusion for stakeholders.
Hi Claire, I agree on having a common strategy. It is so important to make sure different departments are coming together with the customer in mind and advocating for the brand.