Last night I was lucky enough to participate in a timely panel discussion put on by the Social Media Club. The topic: Who owns social media in the enterprise? Co-moderators Cathy Brooks and Chris Heuer did a fantastic job of setting the stage for myself and my co-panelists: the always eloquent Mike Manuel of Voce Communications (a college compatriot of mine), and straight-shooter Jeremy Toeman, formerly of Sling Media, now partner at Stage Two Consulting, whose candor really added life to the discussion.
It became quickly apparent this discussion could indeed go well into night. But I think the answer, at least in the short-term, became clear: marketing/PR owns social media. I don’t normally use those two phrases interchangeably – as a PR professional who has worked in-house within marketing departments for the last 5 years, I’m well aware of the differences between the two. But because it seemed to vary case-by-case which exact function leads social media within an organization, I’ll group them together for now.
Setting aside this was a room full of PR/marketing professionals for a second, I basically agree with this premise. Today, online (and therefore public) acts of customer engagement for any purpose – be it from a customer service, product or sales perspective – automatically become marketing events. So, like it or not, marketers have been sacked with the responsibility of making sure these “events” support the broader strategy – not derail it. Which means marketing/PR is left holding the bag if someone makes a social media misstep. Even if there is no finger-pointing per se, marketing pays for it in time and resources spent. If you take the inverse of the famous quote “with great power comes greater responsibility” and turn it into “with great responsibility comes greater power” the logic is there that marketing should dictate and drive an enterprise social media strategy. Otherwise, we’re saying the only option is for marketing to take a reactive approach, do damage control when needed, and hope for the best.
Lots of really smart people turned out for the panel. I particularly enjoyed meeting Text 100’s Christopher Lynn, CBS Interactive’s Andrew Mager, who posted a great panel re-cap, along with action shots over at ZDNet, Marie Williams at SHIFT Communications, Carlos Hernandez, and Laura Iriarte of The Smart Moms Network. The great discussion continues – stay tuned on Twitter or via the Social Media Club.