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When a new competency is embraced by a larger entity, it is the nature of a corporate organization to turn that group into a department. In fact, most PR and advertising agencies actively seek to build or acquire a social media department to meet the growing demand for conversational services (Silo image by eirikref).
Integration is the key. And I’ve said this before when I was a stand-alone social media firm.
Every marketing department, every communications function, each practice area, and all teams should have this capability. And social media needs to stop being looked at as a new profession. Instead these tools should be regarded as something that just about any worker can use in their tasks. By nature there will be some folks who are better at it than others, and they will evolve as specialists (remember the investor relations and analyst relations specialist, the copywriter in the ad agency?).
The big issue we have to address as an industry – and CRT/tanaka as a subset – is cultural. Dishing to the social media consultant an industrial revolution mentality. This reflects corporate America’s legacy, and smart companies are evolving to become information age companies. Social media, the enablement of two-way conversations, should be something that companies seek to adopt across the line as part of this larger global trend.
Stakeholders Don’t Distinguish Between
From a communications standpoint, interaction with stakeholders only adds more power. Learning to embrace and simply incorporate this ethos regardless of type of communication makes sense. And believe me, customers don’t really care whether you classify it as social media.
Ad campaigns like Jason Falls’ recent Jim Beam effort, or PR efforts that include Real (not failed) conversational blogs and dialogue on socnets, interactive that intelligently incorporates sharing, customer service, HR, etc., etc. It allows for more fluid information exchange.
In my mind, this is a CxO challenge. Executives need to drive this, and not just send off a memo saying go do. We need to examine processes, job descriptions, IT policies, performance benchmarks and reward mechanisms to successfully achieve a more fluid architecture.
Quality checks are necessary so we don’t go off crowdsourcing full marketing strategy or the CEO. The wisdom of crowds can be fraught with erring direction. Yet that, too, is a reevaluation of the processes behind decision making.
The C-Suite at CRT gets this. CRT doesn’t believe in siloization of social media. Social Media will be housed as part of CRT’s interactive department, but my mission is to make CRT a social media savvy agency across the frontline, whether that’s PR, advertising or interactive. The Social Media portion of the Interactive group ideally will be the heavy lifting section for major strategies and efforts. Wish us luck as we go for whatcanbe as opposed to settling for the status quo.
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April 10th, 2009 at 7:21 am
[...] The above is an abridged version of a post originally published on the CRT/tanaka blog. To read the next section of the post, “Stakeholders Don’t Distinguish Between,” visit the full post. [...]
April 10th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I agree - social media is a cross-functional competency. But it does need an owner, an early adopter in each key department. So Marketing has a different set of best practices for community participation than might PR, and will HR people / recruiters. Then internal social media adoption (enterprise 2.0 and social collaboration) requires buy-in from executives, IT and operations people. It’s a transformation process for a whole company, and I agree - not isolated to a “Social Media Department”. However it does help to have an overall social technology strategy champion to unify the effort of the enterprise.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
[...] There is No Social Media Department [...]
April 10th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The right strategy, the right people and executive support (and engagment) across the company will make you successful. This is well done.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
No silos!
April 10th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Understanding the purpose is tantamount to creating a department. One of the hardest elements of best practice online marketing is that technology changes so quickly there’s barely time to establish best practices. Embracing new media as it emerges within an established marketing department helps with metrics, buy in AND long term success. Great post, thanks.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
The trouble with organizations is that the tools they use to encourage a practice namely roles, rules and economic incentives are at odds with the development of social networks. Therefore trying to make social network development any one department or person’s responsibility is likely to fail. There are however ways to mitigate against this and ensure an organization is able to capitalize on the benefits of strong social networks.
During the research for my forthcoming book (Leadershift - reinventing leadership for the age of mass collaboration) I have found four conditions which need to be in place for communities to form and be productive. These are the elements leaders should focus on (at every level not just executive) and reinforce I called these
Simplicity (a coherent and simple way to engage),
Narrative (an underpinning story for people to align to),
Tasks (a clear set of tasks which participants can measure against their self image) and
Love (the willingness to commit to making others stronger).
These conditions will not only give impetus to communal development but ensure resilience irrespective of technological advances.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:33 am
[...] “The siloization of social media… represents a strategic error.” — There Is No Social Media Department [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
The dialogue about processes and managing the evolution is something we talked about quite a bit earlier this week. I cleaned up the posts and CRT/tanaka interactive laid them out in a white paper discussing this evolution. Find the link on the bottom of ensuing post:
http://blog.crt-tanaka.com/2009/04/social-solutions-for-those-who-need-it-most/
We’d love your feedback.
April 13th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[...] The above is an abridged version of a post originally published on the CRT/tanaka blog. To read the next section of the post, “Stakeholders Don’t Distinguish Between,” visit the full post. [...]
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 am
Interesting blog post. What would you say was the most important factor in using NLP?
September 6th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I agree with this approach in that social media needs to be driven by the top down, however, I disagree that there is no room for a social media dept in organisations (esepcially large ones). While SM has become second nature to many, there are still hordes that need convincing before any meaningful adoption of SM for business can take place.
Advocacy and best-practice would be the role of a social media dept in a larger organisation.
March 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Some even say that reduced mobility in sperm also decreases the fertility of a man. On top of that, the list goes on and on.
May 23rd, 2010 at 8:33 am
Nice! Thanks for making my morning a little bit better with this great article!! :-P