Do corporate social media efforts need someone to take the reign? Does it need its own department?
Recently I attended a social media conference in Boston. Someone (I really wish I was better at remembering names) stated that social media was not a department but a competency. Although I believe this to be true for the most part I am really leaning toward the thought there needs to be more than that.
Credit: Jezza MK from flickr.com
Currently, I get the feeling that companies are using their web departments, a marketing rep, communications staff or a combination as a social media stop gap. This person or persons ends up swimming in the murky waters of social media at the same time as being tethered to the shoreline of their daily responsibilities. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this approach and it might ultimately evolve into a social media only position. And that goes back to my opening questions, should there be someone holding the reigns and a department dedicated to social media.
I think it is beneficial to have a core group of social media liaisons spread through out various organizational departments. I also think there needs to be a person assigned to guide these liaisons and act as a mentor, chief tweeter, facebook expert, etc. I also think this position needs to be the guiding force behind the direction the company follows in regards to social media. Essentially a department of one with representatives in each department. I don’t think this position needs to be filled by someone from generation social but should be filled with someone that understands the value of customer relations, knows the message the company wants to send out and gets brand management should include the customer’s voice. Customer’s experience with your company shapes their perception of your company as much if not more than a shiny brand campaign, at least until someone creates a thought control machine.
So the quick and dirty summary is this: Yes you need someone to head-up social media and wrangle all the disparate pieces, no you don’t need a full-blown department per se.
I would love to hear some feedback. 1.) Because it would let me know that people actually read this stuff. 2.) Because I really like hearing about what others are doing in the social media space and how they are working it out in their own companies. Even if you disagree with me at least it is the start of a conversation.
I think it’s still like the early days of the corporate website. No one could really put their finger yet on why specifically they “needed” one, but they just kept hearing that they did. The decision-makers weren’t quite buying in, so they threw the people who they trusted with their brands (Marketing or PR folks) at it –as with social– as “related duties as assigned,” before they’d commit resources solely to it. The problem was, by the time they came around, they were that much further behind the curve, and still didn’t REALLY know what was on their hands.
I think social is still finding its way, and the recent “breaches” of consumer confidence (read: privacy) are very similar to the data mining of 10 or 12 years ago, but back then it was just an email address and maybe a phone number. Now it’s email address, personal consumer preferences, likes/dislikes, friends, tweets, that if compromised will get you slimed faster these days than ever before (see also: Goodman, Myron and Facebook, Overzealous)
So how do you staff for that? How do you roadmap your business plan for that? If you’re new to the block, you can try to plan your way (often by committee) becasue everyone knows something about something, but if you’re playing catch-up, grab someone from each department who “gets it,” but also has some clout with their peers, so it’s not just a game. If it’s going to be part of your business (and why wouldn’t it be?), there has to be at least a core of folks who treat it as such, not just the distraction that it can easily and often does become.
McD, I agree that it is still the early days of social but I think the adoption rate for individual services and the overall speed of acceptance for social media in general has forced the corporate hand. (Perhaps a little more rapidly then a corporation might like.) A quick for instance in the local market place would be the Washington Post. Slow to the market place with a website but now has a slew of bloggers and social media types.
Ford’s CEO blogged about company issues, Mark Cuban has laid to waste many topics via his blog, Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Capitals is a prolific blogger. So much so that the Capitals were one of the first professional teams to embrace blogging as a form of journalism.
The fact that ESPN has a policy against using twitter, by the way I think that is the totally wrong way to go, shows that corporations are at least aware of the power of social media. It may even be an over reaction to your point about website development and go to the extreme of thinking “HOLY S#!*, we totally missed the boat on that web thing. We can’t do the same thing here.” Which can lead to some other issues, for instance jumping into every new social net without some sort of strategy.
I do like your point about having someone that has clout with their peers as a representative. Maybe as this medium quickly grows out of its infancy (or toddlerhood) social media departments will become the norm but I would currently shy away from a department approach and lean toward the one head-many tentacles approach, at least as a start. This approach might help alleviate the pains of playing catch-up and could keep a company afloat until a plan can be worked out and a core group of people can be hired if needed.