Is social media forcing us to be proper marketeers?

By May 21 2010, 9:01 am 3 Comments
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I read an interesting article on Mashable recently about which department “owns” social media. My hope was that if we answered that question, we might have a better idea which agency is best set to deal with it.

As you would expect the majority of companies surveyed handled social media through their digital department, but the point raised was that we all have a responsibility to make social media work for our employers and clients.

Why? Because social media works better when it’s integrated into an organisations process. This could be for customer service, advertising and communications, internal comms, HR and recruitment, the list goes on. If we look at the most successful corporate brands, they’re clear, have a defined proposition and deliver on their brand promises.

Marketers are forever beating that drum, “live the brand”. Social media allows us in part to really deliver on this. When marketers talk integration, they often talk media channel. When marketers talk social media, aren’t they really talking integration in its purest form?

  • http://igmorrison.com iain morrison

    A huge part of the problem is the initial land grab.

    Invariably, you end up with a skew towards the discipline that in their eyes won the war, with many valuable talents / insights / relevant opinions / years of wider comms experience shut out as that one single department wants to protect their new empire. Working together cross-departmentally (and with consumers sat square in the middle of the process), for most will be the only way to achieve any sort of success…

  • http://www.theagencyonline.co.uk/blog/ Saman Mansourpour

    Thanks Iain, I totally agree. Companies won’t be able to run a closed social media policy, it’s impractical. What will be interesting is how companies will set commercial objectives around SM and train staff as SM brand ambassadors.

  • John Gallen

    Considering that no one knows the true value of social media (except the “experts” …take that with a pinch of salt) and how to quantify the investment, I cannot imagine any one single dept wishing to take it all on unless they are contemplating suicide-by-procurement.

    It should be spread across the various disciplines, some of which you name above Saman, well done, to avoid tunnel vision from some over hyped 22 year old exec that believes he / she knows what the web will look like in six months time…. Like ‘Bebocide’, I will put money down that ‘Facebocide’ is only around the corner! …and all the investment in that will likely result in big problems for a single dept. Bring on Diaspora !

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