Two big questions continue to circulate through the social media space: What is the ROI of Social Media, and Who Owns Social Media. This is the second in a series of 4 posts about my thoughts and philosophy on these topics. My objective is to bring clarity for those seeking greater understanding of how social media will impact their organization.
Despite seeming unrelated, I think that these questions are actually inter-related. The first step to gaining clarity is to parse the question of ownership into two subsets: Thought leadership within the field; and accountability within an organization.
Accountability within an Organization
The question, “Who owns social media” is asked in one of two contexts:
within an organizational context
Will our social media program be controlled by the PR department, the marketing department, HR, etc.
or outside the organizational context
Who is developing best practices, who are the thought leaders, what are the standards and who is determining what they are.
(I wrote about the second question here.)
Who Owns Social Media in the Organization?
Today I’m writing about the issue of departmental control. Who takes point on developing the message? Isn’t PR best at broadcasting the short-form, digital update? What about the marketing folks and their strength at crafting a look and feel that appeals to the customer? Or the sales department’s skills in building relationships, on- or off-line? And don’t forget about customer service – they have the capacity to respond in real-time to issues and feedback via social media.
Clearly, each department in an organization will bring a unique set of skills, abilities and perspective to the table. In fact, social media case studies abound that highlight results achieved within specific departments of large organizations applying social media tools to overall strategy: Comcast with customer service; Ford with PR; Dell with sales; etc. Many of my readers will no doubt be familiar with these case studies, so no need to re-hash them here.
Social Media Plan
Rather than obsessing over which silo has the best social media grain, the real question should be: Who is accountable for the results? And the natural precedent to this question is: What is the specific business objective we are attempting to achieve with our social media strategy? Or, put another way:
Business Objective ? Strategy ? Plan ? Accountability
Strategy unbounded by the context of an objective is called “brainstorming”. It is unmeasurable, and therefore cannot be deemed successful, cannot be improved, and cannot be duplicated.
Business Objective Drives Social Media Plan
Looking again at the original question, then, it becomes evident that the business objective drives the specific accountability, which in turn determines who “owns” the social media activity in pursuit of that objective. Baking this into your organizational plan may mean that multiple departments each “own” their specific pieces of the social media puzzle. Alternatively, your company may choose to appoint a specific individual responsible for multiple (or all) components of the plan. How far down you push responsibility for the results depends on your specific culture, organizational design, circumstances, scope of the objective, etc.
Be aware, however, that the various “owners” of your social media activities, need to have the freedom, authority and autonomy to act. The immediacy of social media channels – the real-time, right-now, instantaneous feedback loop – will run roughshod over any attempts to bureaucratize the interaction. Next stop: governance…
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