In Social Media

Who owns social media in the corporation?

A few months ago I weighed in on the debate about what kind of agency will “own” social media in the long run. Today at Social Fresh (@sofresh) Charlotte we had the opportunity to explore the flip side of the equation: who “owns” social media on the client side? Both Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) from Radian6 and Bert Dumars (@bwdumars) from Rubbermaid each shared their perspective, which we pretty much aligned.

The short answer, and one my experience tells me is dead on, is that in companies that have started to aggressively jump into social media, no one team, group, or discipline “owns” social media. In the past, and still in many companies today, PR might claim social given their traditional role in managing public perception and the flow of the conversation; marketing might claim it given its utility as a customer acquisition channel; advertising might jump on it given, hey, it’s *media* after all.

That squabble appears to be less and less of the norm, and more of the exception. Social media is starting to earn its chops as a key part of the strategic marketing, communications, and even customer service mix, and as a result it’s becoming less of an issue of “I OWN THIS” and more of “How can THIS help out our existing products and programs.”

The Now Revolution - Social Fresh Charlotte-1.jpgSlide/image from Amber’s keynote presentation, available on Slideshare.

Amber outlined a new way to approach social media organizationally – the council model (see image above), where each team leader (budget/plank owner) has their own social media strategy, mandate, and (hopefully) budget and resources and they then collaborate with each other on best practices, ideas, and standards that span the entire company. Often they are helped by corporate-level staff that act as subject matter experts to help guide the whole discussion along – Bert @ Rubbermaid essentially sits in just such a role.

Is this the ideal way for a company to handle social media? Depends – on how large the company is, how many divisions it has, how the functional responsibilities are split up, and so on. But it’s a model I’ve seen at several clients, and it’s definitely one that’s being employed successfully by others in the field.


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  3. Is Your Social Media Marketing Evergreen?
  • AmberNaslund

    Hey Kevin -

    Thanks for the post. What I particularly like about this model is that it works with small businesses – i.e. those that have just a couple of departments and a handful of people but still need a way to coordinate efforts – all the way up to the bigger brands.

    And I too am really glad to see the dialogue evolving from ownership/territory (though I still hear enough of those) to about how different areas of the business are actually going to employ it in the way that makes sense for them.

    Thanks for the (fast!) post and continuing the discussion.

    Cheers!
    Amber Naslund
    Radian6

  • http://www.socialmallard.com/ Kevin Briody

    Hi Amber – thanks for stopping by! I think it really depends on how “mature” the organization is around social media. If they are just picking it up, are still learning, etc I think you'll typically see more issues around ownership by the functional departments. If they've been at it for a while and can see how the functional silo approach doesn't reflect reality, I think the team leads model as you outlined just becomes the more obvious way to organize a social media working group.

    Great keynote, by the way. I had to sprint out a couple minutes early for a call, but I definitely enjoyed it.